RING IF 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE 



OF 



MORALITY; 



OR, 



ETHICAL PRINCIPLES DISCUSSED AND 
APPLIED. 



7 



EZEKIEL GILMAN ROBINSON, D. D., LL. D. 

PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY. 



^ 




OPR 21 1888 n 



SILVER, ROGERS & CO., PUBLISHERS, 

50 Bromfield Street, 

BOSTON. 



\<S 






^ 



Copyright, 1888, by 
SILVER, ROGERS & CO. 



ERRATA. 



Preface, page iv, line two from bottom, should be 1886 instead of 1888. 

Page 38, line five, should be as instead of an. 

Page 156, line seven from bottom, (d) should be (c). 

Page 163, last line, should be natural instead of naturul. 



PEEFACE 



A new text-book on Morals may justly be challenged 
to prove its right to appear in an already over-crowded 
community of similar treatises. The only answer that 
in this case can be given is, that the book has been made 
for a service which no one of its predecessors could be 
persuaded to render. It embodies the lectures its 
author has given to his classes in Ethics, and is, what it 
purports to be, distinctively a text-book. It touches 
existing controversies only so far as is necessary for the 
elucidation or defence of its own positions. The aim has 
been to condense rather than to expand its discussions, 
and to diminish rather than to multiply its pages. 
Numerous references to authors, with foot-notes and 
statements of controverted points, have been purposely 
omitted. One of the easy, and one of the useless things 
in a text-book on morals at the present day, is to accu- 
mulate such references and notes. Too many of them 
distract the studeut's attention, and often bewilder him. 
Well-read teachers make little or no use of them; 
teachers who are not well-read commonly lack the time 
or inclination to look up the references for their own in- 
formation. Most of what the author has thought it 
necessary or desirable to say respecting the various 
schools of moralists and their methods may be found 
in the somewhat lengthened Chapter III. of Part II. 
Division IV. on "The Ultimate Ground of Obligation." 

iii 



iv PREFACE. 

To have anything like a clear understanding of ex- 
isting ethical controversies, one must know the ethical 
treatises that have appeared within the last fourteen 
years. 

When Prof. Sidgwick published the first edition of 
his Methods of Ethics, in 1874, — it has been called an 
" epoch-making book," — English speaking moralists 
were grouped under two general classes, known as intui- 
tionalists and utilitarians or derivatists. Prof. Sidg- 
wick in criticising these two classes handled a two-edged 
sword, cutting keenly into "egoistic hedonism," but 
turning the sharper edge on " intuitionism." His own 
theory he styled " universalistic hedonism." In 1876, 
two years after the appearance of the Methods of Eth- 
ics, Mr. F. H. Bradley published his Ethical Studies, 
consisting of an application of Hegelian principles to 
ethical questions. In 1878 appeared Herbert Spencer's 
Data of Ethics, giving the methods and fundamental 
principles of the Ethics of Evolution. In 1882 Mr. 
Leslie Stephen, with the same purpose as Mr. Spencer, 
but seeking it by a different method, published his 
Science of Ethics. In 1883 appeared Prof. T. H. Green's 
posthumous but elaborate and able Prolegomena to 
Ethics, giving the Hegelian view of the ethical contro- 
versy started by evolutional ethics. In 1885 appeared 
Dr. James Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, 2 vols., 
on the intuitional side ; and the same year was published 
in this country Pres. Porter's Elements of Moral Science, 
in a modified way on the utilitarian side. In 1887, 
Principles of Morals, by Prof. Fowler of Oxford, was 
published (Introductory chapters by Profs. Wilson and 
Fowler had appeared in 1888), maintaining that ethical 
ideas and principles originated in the progressive expe- 



PREFACE. V 

rience of the race and have been historically developed. 
The treatise is distinctly utilitarian. 

Of the various and conflicting theories of these writ- 
ers, three have been worked out by methods wholly for- 
eign to those of both the older intuitionalists and the 
older utilitarians. The first, in the order of time, was 
the Hegelian. This theory while resting all on con- 
sciousness, and making man to be a part of nature, and 
his consciousness a manifestation of the Divine Mind of 
the universe, finds the standard of right for every indi- 
vidual man in the moral laws recognized in his time and 
in the community of which he is a part. The second, 
was the evolutional, which supposes all moral ideas and 
moral sentiments to have been naturally evolved out of 
a pre-intelligent as well as a pre-moral state of the race. 
The third, which styles itself the "historical method," 
maintains "that morality is the result of constant 
growth," " the result of the constant interaction of the 
primary feelings of our nature." * This last-named the- 
ory has some noticeable points of affinity, and apparent 
agreement, with the evolutional theory. 

Evolutional ethics assumes and " historical " ethics 
implies, that the explanations they give of the process 
by which moral laws and their sanctions have become 
known are also explanations of the process by which 
these have been originated. But grant, if we will, that 
evolution and historical development have made the race 
aware of the existence of moral distinctions, this by no 
means proves that experience has created the distinc- 
tions. Neither of these theories accounts for the origin 
of the feeling of oughtness ; neither do they explain the 
imperativeness with which recognized moral law always 

1 See Prof. Fowler's Preface. 



VI PREFACE. 

speaks to the human heart. Experience can tell what 
has been; can help us to conjecture what may be ; it can 
never tell what ought to be. No cautious moralist will 
be in haste to construct his moral system on any basis 
yet furnished by natural science. Nor need any one 
take alarm at the threatened supplanting of "meta- 
physical ethics" either by "historical ethics" or by the 
long ago christened but yet unborn " scientific ethics." 

In treating of morals, with any semblance of either 
science or philosophy, we must deal with moral phe- 
nomena as we would with any other phenomena that are 
indubitably real. No theory of their origin has anything 
to do with their reality, or with the trustworthiness of 
our explanation of them. The laws of Astronomy have 
nothing to do with any theory of the origin of our 
planetary system. If the nebular hypothesis could be 
demonstrated with mathematical precision to be true ? 
the science of astronomy would remain precisely what 
it now is. Geology is none the less a science because of 
uncertainty as to the origin of many of the facts with 
which it deals. The simple question with both Astron- 
omy and Geology is, can these sciences explain their 
facts and phenomena, and so explain them as to give 
us co-ordinated and systemized principles and truths ? 
And precisely so is it with Ethics in dealing with the 
moral facts and phenomena of man. Can it so explain 
these as to draw from them a self-consistent system of 
moral truths and precepts ? If it can, it matters little 
what may be our theory of the origin of the phenomena; 
whether man came into being by direct creative power, 
and his knowledge of moral distinctions by intuition, 
or both were slowly evolved through countless ages out 
of materials that were neither intelligent nor moral. 



PREFACE. Vli 

But if in attempting to account for the origin of moral 
phenomena they are robbed of the one characteristic of 
them all, viz. an imperativeness of command to every 
human being, it is not so much a science or a philosophy 
of morals that is given us, as it is a compound of pru- 
dential considerations made up of generalizations from 
natural science, partly scientific and partly metaphysical. 

The value of a historical method, in the true sense of 
the terms, in a science or a philosophy of morals, can 
hardly be over-estimated. Like every other science or 
department of philosophy, that of morals can be best 
understood only through a knowledge of its history. 
This history is interwoven with the whole general his- 
tory of philosophy, — indeed, with the history of man- 
kind. Special histories of ethical systems also abound. 1 

But it should not be forgotten that there can be no 
strict science of morals in the same sense of the word 
science as there can be a science of physiology, or even 
of psychology. Strict science fulfils its whole task in 
simply telling what is. A full account of morals 
must not only tell what is, which is all that science 

1 Of these it will suffice to mention Mackintosh's well-known Dissertation 
on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy ; The latter half of Prof. Bain's 
Mental and Moral Science; Prof. Sidgwick's very condensed Outlines of the 
History of Ethics; and in contrast, Maurice's very diffuse and undigested 
Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy; Prof. Courtney devotes Part 2d of 
his Constructive Ethics to a historical survey and criticism of German and 
English moralists. On Ethics in England, may be mentioned Whewell's 
Lectures; Prof. S. S. Laurie's Notes, Expository and Critical; Wilson and 
Fowler's Principles of Morals, Part I. "Introductory Chapters," with a 
pronounced utilitarian bias. In addition to these special histories may be 
mentioned histories of Philosophy, specially, for Grecian ethics, Zeller's 
Greek Philosophers, Prof. Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues and Sir 
A. Grant's Ethics of Aristotle. Many side-lights to the history of Ethics are 
also furnished in the history of Christianity and of Christian doctrines, and 
in certain special histories, such as Lecky's History of Rationalism and His- 
tory of European Morals, and Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought 
in the Eighteenth Century. 



viii PREFACE. 

can do, but, calling philosophy to its aid, it must tell 
us what ought to be, and why it ought to be. In ex- 
plaining and justifying the " ought " we must have 
recourse to some of the profoundest principles of 
which philosophy has any knowledge. A full treat- 
ment of morals, therefore, requires that in dealing 
with its facts our method should be scientific, and in 
treating of the principles, which the facts imply and 
involve, our method should be philosophical. 

It is possible that criticism will be made on the length 
of some of the discussions under " Principles of Moral- 
ity" and on the brevity of others. The extent of the 
discussion has been determined by the supposed needs 
in each case. The needs will doubtless be differently 
estimated by different writers. In the author's esti- 
mation no questions in the whole range of ethical dis- 
cussions, and specially at the present stage of these 
discussions, are so fundamental as those of conscience, 
inclusive of the moral judgments, and the ultimate 
ground of moral obligation. All ethical questions 
resolve themselves, in the last analysis, into the ques- 
tion of conscience and the final ground of its decisions. 
The treatment of "Practical Morality" has been pur- 
posely made brief. Any teacher who may desire to 
amplify will find, if he wants, abundant materials in 
other treatises, particularly in Wayland's Moral Science, 
the best treatment of practical ethics yet to be found in 
our language. 

E. G. ROBINSON. 
Brown University, 
February, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

PREFACE iii 

PRELIMINARY 1 

Definition: Sources: Relations. 

PART I. 

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 
CHAPTER I. 

Principles Ascertained 13 

CHAPTER II. 
Distribution of Materials 22 

PART II. 

THEORETIC MORALITY. 

DIVISION I. 

THE MORAL, FACULTY OR CONSCIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 

Meanings of the terms Moral Faculty and Conscience 26 

CHAPTER II. 
Origin of the Conscience 33 

CHAPTER III. 

Conscience and the Moral Consciousness ... 44 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Moral Taste and Conscience ..... 49 

CHAPTER V. 

Conclusions respecting Conscience as a Faculty . 52 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE VI. 
The Function or Conscience 58 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Actual Judgments of Conscience .... 65 
Section 1. Rightness and justness of our moral self-judg- 
ments . 66 

Section II. Relation of self-judgments to other mental acts 69 

Section III. Supreme authority of conscience . . 72 

DIVISION II. 

MORAL LAW. 

CHAPTER I. 

Place and Significance of Moral Law in Ethics . . 79 

CHAPTER II. 
Idea and Definition of Moral Law .... 82 

CHAPTER III. 
Various Kinds of Laws 88 

CHAPTER IV. 
Origin of Moral Law 90 

CHAPTER V. 
Tests of Moral Laws . 93 

CHAPTER VI. 
Design of Moral Law 97 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Sanctions of Moral Law 101 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Perpetuity of Moral Law ...... 104 

CHAPTER IX. 
The Peeling of Obligation 106 



CONTENTS. Xi 

DIVISION III. 

THE WILL. 

CHAPTER I. 

Connection of Will with other Ethical Factors . 109 

CHAPTER II. 
What is the Will? Ill 

CHAPTER III. 
Relation of Will to the Other Powers . - . 113 

CHAPTER IV. 
Conditions under which Will acts 118 

CHAPTER V. 

Freedom of the Will 122 

Section I. Freedom as absence of outward constraint . 124 
Section II. Freedom as equipoise or indifference between 

objects 126 

Section III. Freedom as a condition of rational existence 127 

Section IV. Freedom as harmony among the soul's powers 130 

CHAPTER VI. 
Determinism 134 

DIVISION IV. 
VIRTUE AND THEORIES OF VIRTUE. 

CHAPTER I. 
Morality, Virtue, and Righteousness .... 138 

CHAPTER II. 

Theories of Virtue 141 

CHAPTER III. 

The Ultimate Ground of Obligation 145 

Section I. Theories of a supreme will .... 153 

Section II, Theories of good ends subserved . . . 154 

Section III. Theories of principles or of subjective states 164 

Section rV. Theory of the immutable nature of God . 171 



xii CONTENTS. 

PART III. 

PRACTICAL MORALITY. 

Preliminary 181 

DUTIES TO GOD. 

CHAPTER I. 

Recognition of God in Nature 184 

CHAPTER II. 

Religious Observances 185 

CHAPTER III. 

Working together with God 192 

DUTIES TO ONE'S SELF. 

CHAPTER I. 

Reality op Duties to Self 195 

CHAPTER II. 

Duties to Self always and everywhere . . . 197 

CHAPTER III. 

Duties to Self in Social and Civil Relations . . 205 
CHAPTER IV. 

Duties in Special Circumstances 214 

DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 

CHAPTER I. 

Duties to Pellow-Beings simply as Pellow-Beings . 218 

CHAPTER II. 

Duties in the Pamily 231 

CHAPTER III. 

Mutual Duties in the Dependencies of Society . 238 

CHAPTER IV. 
Duties to the State 245 



PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 



PRELIMINARY. 



§1. The terms Moral Science and Moral Philoso- 
phy are commonly used in our day interchangeably 
and as synonymous. But they cannot justly be 
regarded as strictly identical in meaning. 

° J ° Definition. 

Moral Science is definite and exact knowl- 
edge respecting morals ; Moral Philosophy is a justi- 
fication of the principles that are always implied or 
assumed in Moral Science ; and it may also include a 
discussion of questions which the conclusions of the 
science suggest, but which it cannot answer, because 
lying beyond its range. Moral Science aims to de- 
cide for us what conduct is right ; Moral Philosophy, 
why it is right. But neither one can complete itself 
without the aid of the other. Thus those writers who 
insist that Morals shall always be treated scientifi- 
cally, that is, by an a posteriori process, — who de- 
fine Moral Science, or Ethics, as the science of right 
conduct, — are compelled, in determining what shall 
be regarded as right conduct, to step outside the 
limits of science, and into the realm of philosophy. 



2 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer says : " Morality, properly so 
called, — the science of right conduct, — has for its 
object to determine how and why certain modes of 
conduct are detrimental and certain other modes 
beneficial." The "how" is manifestly a question of 
science ; the " why " is also, with equal plainness, a 
question of philosophy. Others, again, define Ethics 
as the "science of human duties," and claim to be 
able by strictly scientific methods to determine what 
human duties really are, forgetting apparently that the 
question what makes duty to be duty, — why some 
actions are obligatory and others are not, — is strictly 
a philosophical and not a scientific inquiry. 

Thus any treatment of Morals that is complete in 
itself must be both philosophical and scien- 
tific. Ethics as a science aims to discrimi- 
nate between, and to classify, acts as right or wrong ; 
as a philosophy, it aims to furnish and to justify the 
principles according to which the discrimination and 
classification must be made. Or, as the order more 
naturally is, Ethics first as a philosophy seeks to 
determine as accurately as possible the moral princi- 
ples or laws by which human conduct should always 
be regulated, — to ascertain, through an appeal to 
every accessible source of knowledge, the moral laws 
by which the conduct and characters of men are 
always to be judged; then, having ascertained the 
principles of human action, and the laws that should 
regulate it, Ethics as a science seeks to determine 
and to classify the courses of action that all men 
ought to pursue. And since all action results in per- 



PRELIMINARY. 3 

sonal character, Ethics requires a treatment, both 
philosophical and scientific, of the nature of true 
virtue, ideal and real, the necessity and means of 
acquiring it, and the connection of the possession or 
the want of it with individual and social well- 
being. 

It is not, however, the province of Ethics, whether 
as a philosophy or a science, to furnish specific and 
infallible criteria for all imaginable indi- 

. , t . ~ ...... Casuistry. 

vidual actions. Casuistry, m its distinctive 
and restricted sense of deciding the right and wrong 
of all possible human actions, does not properly come 
within the sphere of either scientific or philosophical 
Ethics. The endless complexities and diversities of 
human actions make it simply impossible that criteria 
for testing all should be supplied. But Ethics should, 
and does, furnish such knowledge of the means of 
ascertaining the moral quality, and thus the right 
and wrong, of all human actions and of all human 
relations, as shall enable every one to determine 
for himself, with proximate accuracy, what ought in 
given cases to be done, and what has been right 
or wrong in specific actions already performed. 
The terms Ethics and Morals (the first _, . 

v Ethics and 

from the Greek, and the other from the Morals 
Latin) 1 are commonly used by modern synonymous - 
writers as having one and the same meaning, and it 
will be observed are so used in these pages. 

§ 2. Our conception of the Sources of Ethics will 
depend on our conception of the tests of right and 

i 'HOlko., mores. 



4 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

wrong, as also on our conception of what is called 

the ultimate ground of moral obligation. If it be the 

purpose of Ethics to decide what conduct 

Sources. x 

is right for man, it should also furnish a 

test or standard of right; and if possible it should 

also give sufficient reason why all should conform to 

the standard, — in other words, should show what is 

the real and ultimate ground of moral obligation. 

Whatever will give us this standard of right, and 

show us this ground of obligation, will be a Source of 

Ethics. 

If, now, we assume that conduciveness of actions to 

the highest good (summum honum) of man is a test 

of right, and that this highest good is the 
toeoryT™ 1 greatest pleasure or happiness of man, and 

that the ground of obligation is in one's 
duty to secure the greatest possible amount of hap- 
piness to himself, or, as some maintain, to others as 
well, then our sources will be the results of actions as 
ascertained from experience, observation, history, and 
the complex relations of human society. (Utilitarian 
theory, as advocated under varying phases by Paley, 
Bentham, J. S. Mill, and more recently by Prof. 
Sidgwick.) If with the modifications of this theory 
suggested by evolutionists we assume that "conduct 
is good or bad," according as it is, or is not, " condu- 
cive to life," and "according as it does, or does not, 
bring a surplus of agreeable feeling" (Spencer), or 
that actions are good in proportion to their tendency 
to increase the "efficiency" of society in "self-preserva- 
tion " (Leslie Stephen), then our sources will be mainly 
the sciences of Biology and Sociology. 



PRELIMINARY. 5 

If we assume that the standard of right and the 
test of actions must be found in the positive laws of 
some authority regarded as supreme, then 
the source appealed to will be the enact- authority! 
ments of that authority; for example, the 
enactments of the law-making power of the State 
(Hobbes) ; the canons and dogmas of the Church 
(Eoman Catholics); the Sacred Scriptures (Dymond, 
Wardlaw, and German writers on " Christian Ethics " ) ; 
the writings of philosophers and moral traditions 
(Cicero, Be Officiis). 

If again it be assumed that man is so constituted, 
both intellectually and morally, as not only 
to discriminate intuitively between right J^*™' 170 
and wrong as such, but also, as some main- 
tain, to discern intuitively what is right and what 
is wrong in given cases, then the one absolute source 
will be the moral consciousness, or, according to the 
terminology of many writers of this school, the con- 
science of man. Under various and more or less 
minutely distinguishable diversities of view, this the- 
ory has had numerous advocates : Bishop Butler, 
1726; Price, 1757; Eeid, 1788; Kant, 1785-88; 
Francis Wayland, 1835 ; Archibald Alexander, 1852 ; 
James Martineau, 1885. 

The validity of each and all of the foregoing 
assumptions, if taken unqualifiedly, may 
be disputed. They should be critically the theories 
examined. On some accounts it would be 
desirable that this examination should be made before 
venturing to decide what our sources shall be ; but 



6 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

beginners in the study of Ethics are not so well 
prepared for the examination at the outset as they 
may.be after a consideration of certain other ques- 
tions ; for this reason, as well as others that will 
afterwards appear, a criticism of the theories is de- 
ferred to the concluding part of the discussion of the 
theories of virtue. 

If now we decline to adopt exclusively either one 

of the before-mentioned assumptions, we 

of knowi- still may venture to assume that Ethics, in 

edge to be aiming to determine the moral obligations 
appealed to. ° ° 

of man, should appeal to every conceivable 
and accessible source of knowledge concerning human 
action ; and we shall assume, what we trust may 
afterwards show itself to be authorized, that there 
must be some one source to which every other is 
tributary, and with whose teaching that of every 
other, so far as it goes, must strictly accord. That 
source we claim must be the Moral Consciousness of 
man, that is, the consciousness which, when occupied 
with moral truth and questions of moral obligation, is 
always subject to moral emotions. 

Consciousness is superior to all other sources be- 
cause it is within it that are found all 
conscious- those intuitive ideas of right, justice, truth, 
ness to other an( } ^ u ty on which ethics rests as on an 

sources. J 

immovable foundation; because it is only 
in the light of these intuitive ideas that the teach- 
ing from any and every other source becomes lucid 
and effective; because it is within the sphere of the 
moral consciousness alone, that discrimination between 



PRELIMINARY. 7 

special truths and errors and specific instances of 
right and wrong is made ; because it is within the 
moral consciousness that whatever is derived from 
any other source must vindicate itself as ethically 
true. Nor does this give to the moral consciousness 
an authority independent of that of other sources. 
It simply recognizes three indisputable facts, viz. : 
that no moral truth, come whencesoever it may, can 
ever influence our conduct till, brought within the 
sphere of the moral consciousness, it commands our 
assent; that the moral consciousness of individuals, 
communities, and the race alike, is progressively en- 
lightened by increase of knowledge communicated 
from other and various sources ; that man is so con- 
stituted morally, that moral truths, clearly made 
known and dispassionately regarded, are always sure 
to vindicate their authority within his moral con- 
sciousness, commanding the assent of his intellect if 
not the consent of his heart. 

It is to the Moral Consciousness, therefore, as the 
controlling source, that we must first make Relative 
our appeal, and then secondarily to every authority of 
other source of moral knowledge whence 
can emanate the truths by which consciousness may 
be illuminated and quickened, viz. : the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, particularly the New Testament; the manifest 
result of the principles and practices of men as gath- 
ered from any science, or from history, observation, 
and individual experience; and, lastly, to philology, 
the writings of philosophers, and the literatures of the 
world. The sources to which we would thus resort 



8 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

may not all be appealed to in every question, nor 
always in the order in which we have enumerated 
them, but when consulted, the relative weight of their 
authority may be regarded as follows : 

(a) The Moral Consciousness will be chief and 
finally decisive for reasons already given. 

(b) The moral teachings of the New Testament stand 
next, because to all who are made acquainted with 
them they are a source of enlightenment, clarifying 
consciousness, and within it vindicating, as they have 
always done, their own absolute truth and authority. 

(c) It is within the Moral Consciousness, illuminated 
by the moral teachings of the New Testament, that 
the meaning and the authority of the lessons of expe- 
rience, observation, History, and Sociology are clearly 
recognized. 

(d) As instructed by the New Testament, experi- 
ence, observation, History, and Biology, the mind is 
prepared to understand and accept what is taught by 
Philology, as also whatever is true in the writings of 
philosophers and in the literatures of the world. 

§ 3. Eelations of Ethics to other Sciences. With 

every science that treats of the nature, powers, or 

activities of man, Ethics stands in more or 

The relations. . . . 

less intimate relations, borrowing materials 
from some and contributing to others. 

1. With the Science of Mind Ethics is intimately 
To mental related, though the two sciences are clearly 
science. distinct. The first treats of the strictly 

mental powers, processes, and products ; the second, 
of the moral nature of man, of his moral judgments, 



PRELIMINARY. 9 

and of the moral ends towards which moral judg- 
ments impel him, and towards which his energies 
ought always to be directed. The closeness of the 
connection of the two sciences becomes apparent by 
observing that — 

(a) All moral acts, to be moral, must also be, to a 
greater or less degree, mental acts. 

(b) Ethics and the Science of Mind both make their 
final appeal for information and for decisive tests of 
their conclusions to the same source, — consciousness. 

(c) Mental and moral phenomena always coexist 
and are indissolubly conjoined in action. There is 
always a necessary coaction and interaction between 
the cognitive, the emotional, and the volitional powers. 
Cognition awakens emotion ; emotion prompts to voli- 
tion ; volition, whether terminating in mere purpose or 
consummated in action, always, through reaction, con- 
tributes to the formation of character. 

(d) It is only in the purely intellectual light of 
consciousness that there can be an intelligent interpre- 
tation of the moral phenomena or facts with which 
Ethics has to deal. Many of these facts are the pro- 
ducts of complex mental processes, and consist of ele- 
ments some of which are moral and some non-moral. 
Facts or phenomena, which are thus composite and 
complex, can be analyzed and rightly understood only 
under the guidance of intellect and in the clear light 
of consciousness. 

(e) It is in the light of consciousness alone, and on 
the authority of the ratiocinative power of the soul, 
that the conviction of moral obligation and of per- 



10 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

sonal duty, which a view of moral law spontaneously 
awakens, can, when defied or decried, be vindicated 
and enforced. 

(/) Our Ethics will always correspond to our Sci- 
ence of Mind. If we know one's mental philosophy, 
we may know for a certainty what, if he be logically 
consistent, must be his moral philosophy. As one 
explains the facts of the intellectual consciousness, so 
also must he explain the facts of the moral conscious- 
ness. If one is a sensationalist or an evolutionist 
in Metaphysics, he will necessarily be a utilitarian in 
Ethics ; and if one is an intuitionalist in Metaphysics, 
he will necessarily be an intuitionalist in Ethics. 

2. Eelations with Theology, both natural and re- 
to natural vealed : («) With Natural Theology. The 
theology. main offices of natural theology are to prove 
the existence of a creative personal Being whose will 
is supreme ; to ascertain and classify his attributes, 
and to determine the relation of these to man. It is 
the office of Ethics to ascertain, justify, classify, and 
enforce the moral obligations of man. Natural theology 
examines moral phenomena, whence it educes evidence 
of the existence of the Supreme Being and of his 
supreme will. Moral Philosophy examines the same 
phenomena, whence it educes evidence of the reality 
of moral laws and of their supreme authority over 
man. Ethics and natural theology are not, therefore, 
merely related sciences, covering contiguous and im- 
pinging territories, but most of the ground traversed 
and of materials used is common to both. 

And still further, it is evident that any account that 



PRELIMINARY. 11 

can be given of human duty will necessarily involve 
an inquiry into the real ground of moral obligation; 
and that any satisfactory statement of that 
ground will necessitate an examination of physic of 
the questions whether the ground is in J^ives 
utility, in ultimate and eternal principles, Natural 
or in the immutable nature of a supreme eo °e y - 
personal Being. An examination of these questions 
brings us, in the last analysis, into the presence of a 
Supreme Archetypal nature, before whose righteous 
will, as expressive of His nature, every finite will must 
finally bow. Thus Deontology naturally and neces- 
sarily leads to Natural Theology. The metaphysic of 
Ethics inevitably brings us into the presence of an 
infinite Personality of supreme authority, 

(b) Relations with Christian Theology. The Chris- 
tian Eeligion is pre-eminently an ethical 

t . T , , ^ ,, i Revealed 

religion, it proposes to make men zealous theology, 
of good works," and enjoins on all believers 
in Christ to be "careful to maintain good works." 
Christian theology is a scientific statement of the 
truths of the Christian Eeligion, all of which more 
or less directly enforce practical morality. Ethics is a 
scientific statement of the clearly established duties of 
man, which the doctrines of theology, with more or less 
distinctness, enjoin. Ethics approaches Christianity 
from the practical side ; Theology approaches Ethics 
from the dogmatic or theoretic side. They are but 
two sides of the same truths. Each supplements the 
other. A theology that does not lead to a practi- 
cal righteousness cannot be a true one ; and a practical 



12 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

righteousness or Ethics, whatever its claim to be re- 
garded as scientific or philosophical, that cannot justify 
itself by an appeal to a true Christian theology is one 
that lacks a solid foundation. 

3. Ethics also holds intimate relations with all those 

sciences that pertain to human governments 

of Govern- an( l t° the intercourse of mankind with one 

ment, another in human society. Thus to Political 

Jurispru- ^ 

dence, Science, to Jurisprudence, Economics, and 

soctok^ 8 ' Sociology Moral Philosophy stands in the 
relation of supplying moral laws which they 
cannot safely disregard, and from each in turn it can 
derive more or less support of its own independent 
conclusions. Moral obligation attaches to man not 
merely as an isolated individual, but also to man as 
related to other individuals, and to man as organized 
into society and constituting the state. Personal obli- 
gations, and the personal rights which personal obliga- 
tions authoritatively establish, underlie together, as an 
immutable basis, the science of jurisprudence ; and the 
two sciences of obligations or Ethics, and of rights or 
Jurisprudence, are essential, though silent and only 
implied, factors in the science of Political Economy, — 
factors wanting which, since moral laws are the most 
fundamental and inexorable of all the laws under which 
man exists, the most careful conclusions of political 
economy are hopelessly vitiated, — and they are corner- 
stones in the foundation of Political Science, or the 
science of government; and the sciences of morals, 
jurisprudence, government, and economics will be found 
to be conjoint and controlling factors in the later and 
more pretentious science of Sociology. 



PART I. 

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OF ETHICS. 
CHAPTEE I. 

PRINCIPLES ASCERTABfcSED, 

§4. Ethics, both as a philosophy and a science, 
has to do, as we have seen, with human actions and 
human characters. It proposes to teach Acts and 
men what they ought to do and to become. aetors the 

. . . subject- 

In doing the first, it scrutinizes and judges matter of 

actions ; in doing the second, it analyzes Ethics - 

and weighs characters. Acts and actors, or deeds and 

doers, which together make up the subject-matter of 

Ethics, must, in our examination of them, be regarded 

as correlates and inseparable from one another. Moral 

actions can be performed only by personal beings. 

Actions are at once both an index of what a man is, 

and a means to his becoming what he ought to be. 

A full and accurate exposition, therefore, of what a 

moral action is or implies, and of what constitutes 

personal being, will unfold the fundamental principles 

of moral philosophy. To ascertain these principles 

or factors we must determine : First, what is always 

involved in a moral action ; and, secondly, what always 

enters into and constitutes a responsible actor or 

person by whom the act is performed. 

13 



14 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

§5. 1. Every moral act will be found on analysis to 
what moral involve a purpose or will ; a law ; a result or 
acts involve. c i iarac t er ; and a self -judgment. Thus : 

(a) Every moral act must embody a purpose, i. e. 
must express a volition and be done for some definite 
end. The act always springs from a choice between 
two or more ends; and in the choice between ends 
lies the right or wrong of the act. An unwilled act 
is no moral act at all. Acts, furthermore, which are 
precisely the same in means and outward 

Will. 

form, are rendered totally dissimilar, and 
even opposite in quality, by difference of purpose. 
A heavy and disabling blow may be blamable or 
praiseworthy according as it is prompted by malice 
or by a desire to protect the defenceless. Ascertain 
the purpose of an act, or why it was done, and we 
determine its moral quality as well as the guilt or 
the innocence of its doer. Purpose or end is a mere 
expression of will. Will is, accordingly, one of the 
essential factors of philosophical ethics. 

(5) If the purpose of an act, i. e. the end willed by 
it, always determines its moral quality, it must do so 

because one act is obligatory rather than 

Moral law. . 

another. An act must be right or wrong 

only because it fulfils some clearly defined moral 

obligation. Moral Law, which determines or proclaims 

the obligation, is accordingly another essential factor. 

(c) Every act is followed by its necessary and 

natural consequences to the actor. No act terminates 

in itself, but primarily in the actor, and 

secondarily in those with whom the actor 



PRINCIPLES ASCERTAINED. 15 

is associated. Acts are neither enjoined nor forbidden 
on their own account alone, but also on account of 
their consequences. These consequences are the law's 
sanctions, — its so-called rewards and penalties. They 
show themselves among other ways chiefly in the 
character, in the virtuousness or viciousness of the 
author of the acts. The Nature of true Virtue is 
accordingly another factor. 

(d) Every act, both before and after it is done, is 
•judged by the doer of it. Before the doing, 

\ & . . J . ", Conscience, 

the judgment may be instantaneous and 

utterly false. But every act, as contemplated by its 
author, whether in prospect or retrospect, elicits from 
him a judgment of approval or disapproval. As an 
act in prospect, or a purpose, it elicits, if approved, 
the judgment that the end sought is for him more 
desirable than any other; as a purpose executed, he 
cannot, if he would, avoid judging it, and it is sure to 
evoke a judgment of approval or disapproval accord- 
ing as it is regarded as having fulfilled or violated 
some recognized obligation. Conscience is, therefore, 
another factor in a philosophy of morals. 

§ 6. 2. The principles of ethics must also be looked 
for in an analysis of the doer of moral acts. Moral 
actions can be performed only by personal beings or 
moral agents. Morality is predicable only of persons 
and never of animals or things. An analy- „ 

° ^ Constituents 

sis of personality, therefore, and ascertain- ofperson- 
ment of what constitutes it, is as requisite a 1 y " 
as an analysis of moral action if we would find the 
principles of a true philosophy of ethics. If now 
we analyze personality we shall find: 



16 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

(a) That it plainly consists of at least the power 

to know, the capacity to feel, and the ability to will; 

known as the threefold endowment of intelligence, 

sensibility, and will. But that brutes pos- 

Conscience. . 

sess some degree of intelligence, feeling, and 
will there is no good reason to doubt ; and yet brutes 
are not persons. The whole of personality is not, 
therefore, presented under the mere terms intelligence, 
sensibility or feeling, and will. Intelligence in man 
is something more than a simple power to perceive 
and distinguish : it is a power to compare, to delib- 
erate, to abstract, to generalize, and to judge, — it 
is understanding, it is reason ; and reason travelling 
boundlessly beyond the mere objects of sense to which 
the intelligence of the brute is limited. The intelli- 
gence of the person is also always accompanied with 
consciousness, in which a broad distinction between 
thought and things is clearly recognized, as also be- 
tween thoughts, purposes, and the actions which ex- 
press them. A person is capable of deliberation and 
judgment both before action and after ; and his judg- 
ments are always accompanied with conscious emo- 
tions. He is also conscious of distinctions between 
various and conflicting motives by which he may be 
actuated; and by a necessity of his own being he 
judges his own acts and judges himself as author 
of them, and is conscious of moral emotions as the 
result of his moral self-judgments. The most deci- 
sive characteristic of personality is its self-compelling, 
inextinguishable faculty of self-judgment, — the Con- 
science. And since the analysis of personality is as 



PRINCIPLES ASCERTAINED. 17 

much more decisive than that of an act as a person 
is more than his acts, we shall regard Conscience as 
the foremost factor in a philosophy of ethics. 

(b) Again, another characteristic of personality is 
its immediate apprehension of the intuitive 

. , „ . , , , , . Moral law. 

ideas of right, justice, truth, and duty, — its 
instinctive sense of obligation, and its felt need of 
some authoritative rule or law by which its obliga- 
tions may be determined. So strong is this sense, 
and so sure is it to prompt to a search for, and to 
bring to some kind of apprehension of, moral law, 
that no one exists, in a normal state of being, who 
does not to some degree attempt, however ineffect- 
ually, to hold himself in obedience to some sort of 
rules of conduct. The rules, it is true, may be arbi- 
trary, unnatural, and cramping to both intellect and 
heart, or they may represent with minutest accuracy 
the moral needs of the whole man ; but he accepts and 
obeys them, because with his degree of enlightenment, 
they satisfy his sense of obligation more nearly than 
any others of which he has knowledge. And so uni- 
form is this sense of obligation, and the recognition of 
moral law both as answering to the sense and as the 
counterpart of conscience, that moral law may be said 
to be, like conscience, an integrant part of his being. 
It is on the authority of some kind of moral laws, 
which he has accepted as binding on him, that his 
conscience always renders its decisions. Moral Law, 
therefore, may be instanced as the second great factor 
of ethics. 

(c) Again, moral law, which reason looks for and 



18 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

recognizes, and which conscience in its judgments 

enforces, addresses itself directly and authoritatively 

to the will of man. Will is the central 

principle, the determinative power, of all 

personality. It is to this power that moral law always 

addresses itself with its " thou shalt " or " thou shalt 

not." It is thus the Will that determines all conduct, 

and decides the character of the whole man. Will is, 

therefore, another essential factor in ethics. 

(d) Finally, personality is an aggregate of active 

powers, or vital forces, all of which, unperverted and 

unhindered in their action by the lower 
Virtue. , _ J 

impulses of our nature, tend towards the 

perfectibility of the human type. What these powers 
of the human soul should, and unperverted would, 
work towards, it is the office of moral law to proclaim. 
Moral laws, declaratory of moral duties, do not exist 
for their own sake, nor primarily for any other ends 
than the perfection of individual being. Having their 
ground in moral being, their design as precepts or 
formal rules is to secure the realization of ideally 
perfect personalities. But since persons do not reach 
nor make approaches to perfectibility of type as iso- 
lated units, but only as organized into society, moral 
laws also relate to man in all his endlessly varied 
human relations. And their design is to make of 
individuals the highest and best of which they are 
capable; and, through doing the utmost possible for 
individuals, to accomplish the utmost possible for 
human society. The design is to make man, and all 
men, the possessors of true virtue. The Nature of 



PRINCIPLES ASCERTAINED. 19 

true Virtue, as a realization of this ideal perfectibility 
of personal being, thus becomes necessarily an im- 
portant inquiry, — is in fact an essential factor in a 
philosophy of morals. 

An analysis of personality thus gives us the iden- 
tical components, and so the same factors, 
for a philosophy of ethics that were found mentofthe 
in our analysis of moral action, though in 
a somewhat differing order both of presentation and 
of genetic relation. But the order presented in the 
analysis of personality is more in accordance with 
the natural and logical order of thought, as also of the 
mind's order of procedure in scrutinizing moral con- 
duct and in reviewing the moral systems of men. In 
examining conduct or systems we naturally first ask 
' why men have moral judgments ? then, according to 
what do they judge ? then, do or can they follow 
their moral judgments ? and then, if they do follow 
their judgments, what is the result ? Following this 
order we have as the main factors of the philosophical 
part of ethics : the Eeason as seen in its function 
of moral judgments, — the Moral Faculty, — the Con- 
science ; Moral Law ; the Will ; and true Virtue. 

§ 7. The Sensibilities, or Feelings, one of the elemen- 
tary components of personality, it will be observed, are 
not specially mentioned in this enumeration. The sengi _ 
The omission is not from oversight, and is wntieB. 
justifiable on several grounds. The sensibilities are 
an obscure, debatable, middle ground, covering the 
unknown realm where soul and body unite, the inscru- 
table region lying between the seat of reason and the 



20 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

source of will, and may, therefore, not inappropriately 
be distributed between these two powers. 

The sensibilities, or feelings, are of two kinds in 
their origin, according as they spring either from con- 
ditions of the body or from acts and states of mind. 
If by sensibilities we mean those feelings, or suscep- 
tibilities to feeling of pain or pleasure which have 
Different their origin in involuntary nervous exci- 
meaoings. tations, or in given states of the bodily 
organism, then the relation of these feelings or sus- 
ceptibilities to moral action is too remote to entitle 
them to an independent consideration, or to any more 
than the incidental recognition which their slight con- 
nection with mental action or moral volition make 
necessary. But by feelings we may mean the emotions 
that are awakened by purely perceptional or cogitative 
acts of the mind ; as strictly mental products under 
the control of will they can receive all the attention 
that in ethical discussion can be claimed for them 
either while considering the emotions that always 
accompany our judgments, or while considering the 
emotions, affections, or desires that precede or accom- 
pany volitions. Possibly by feelings may be meant those 
blind desires that spring into consciousness the silent 
product of habits ; but these result in nothing moral 
till first becoming objects of thought, however momen- 
tary, they become purposes and volitions. But in any 
case the connection of the sensibilities with moral 
action will depend on the joint action of the reason and 
the will. "Whatever view, therefore, can be taken of the 
sensibilities as sources of action they may properly be 



THE SENSIBILITIES. 21 

treated of either in connection with the moral judg- 
ments, or with the will. In neither case need they be 
regarded as a special factor in Ethics. 

A distinct and comprehensive discussion of the sen- 
sibilities would also necessarily include an inquiry 
into the nature of pleasure and pain, and into the 
moral effects of pleasure as an inducement to virtue, 
.. d and of pain as a deterrent from vice ; but 
under theories such inquiries would trench on a consid- 
eration of theories of virtue, — especially of 
the theory of utility, — and would subject to the neces- 
sity either of useless repetitions or of two separate and 
incomplete discussions. The truth is, Ethics presup- 
poses some knowledge of man as a compound being 
consisting of body and soul, and as possessing in- 
stincts, hereditary impulses, and self-generated desires, 
of which Physiology and Psychology treat, and which 
it is the business of Ethics to teach us how to control 
and to subordinate to those great ends of life which 
they manifestly were intended to subserve. 

The feelings as sources of action, whether consisting 
of sensations, instincts, appetites, desires, affections, 
sympathies, are all, to greater or less extent, under the 
Under praeti- control of reason and will. To control them, 
cai Ethics. s0 f ar as practicable, is one of the special 
functions of the rational and moral judgments. Ap- 
plication of ethical principles to their control belongs 
to the distinctive sphere of Practical Ethics ; so much 
attention to the sensibilities, therefore, as may be neces- 
sary in addition to what is incidentally and previously 
given will properly come under a discussion of practical 
duties. 



CHAPTER II. 

DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS. 

§ 8. From our analysis of moral action and of per- 
sonal being, it is evident that before we can discrimi- 
Theoreticai nate between actions as right or wrong, and 
and practical before we can test characters as good or bad, 
there must be a critical examination of, and 
agreement upon, the principles through application of 
which the discriminations and tests are to be made. 
The principles themselves are commonly known as 
Theoretic Ethics. But the principles are not theoretic 
in the sense of being hypothetic. They are simply 
abstract truths or statements of what is always con- 
tained in, or implied by, moral actions ; and they con- 
stitute the Philosophy of morals. The application of 
the principles to actual life constitutes what is com- 
monly known as Practical Ethics, and is the Science of 
morals. In a comprehensive treatment of Ethics there 
is required, therefore, first, a critical statement of the 
fundamental principles of being and action on which 
the science of Ethics must rest ; and, secondly, a state- 
ment and enforcement of the practical duties which 
ethical principles require, and require of men both as 
individuals and as organized into human society. 

22 



DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS. 23 

§ 9. Theoretical Ethics may be subdivided into, 
first, those fundamental principles which are derived 
from, or grounded in, the moral nature of 

° -ii Theoretical 

man, and which are ascertained by an ex- Ethics 
animation of him psychologically and of his subdivlded - 
actions analytically ; and, secondly, those fundamental 
questions which an inquiry into the moral nature of 
man necessarily leads to, viz. : questions relating to 
the significance of this moral nature, — why it should 
be what it is, — and relating also to the existence of a 
supernatural government over men, and of a Supreme 
Euler whose existence and attributes man's moral 
nature seems clearly to reveal. A full examination of 
this second division, which includes what is sometimes 
called the Metaphysic of Ethics, 1 would cover the 
domain of Natural Theology, and does not, strictly 
speaking, fall within the sphere of philosophical ethics. 
An exhaustive examination of the two divisions would 
take the inquirer over an extremely wide territory. 
Only two or three of such minor questions, properly 
belonging to the second division, as may be suggested 
in the progress of the discussions, will in what follows 
receive attention. Under Theoretical Ethics we shall 
confine our attention to such ethical principles as the 
analysis of moral being has supplied us with ; and 
under Practical Ethics we shall restrict ourselves to an 
application of the principles to the conduct of men. 

1 See Calderwood's Handbook of Moral Philosophy, p. 219. By Metaphysic 
of Ethics Kant means — and his would seem to be the only strictly legitimate 
meaning — those a priori principles of morals which reason alone apprehends 
and verifies, and to which no amount of experience can add any weight of 
authority. 



24 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

In treating of Theoretic Ethics we shall, for rea- 
Distribution sons a l rea( ty indicated, and for others which 
of Theoretic will more fully appear as we advance, con- 

Ethies. ■ i 

sider — 

I. The Moral Faculty, — the Conscience, — by which 
men judge acts and characters. 

II. Moral Law, or the rule according to which the 
Moral Faculty decides. 

III. The Will, including so much of the Sensibilities 
as has not been considered in treating of the moral 
faculty, or as may not be more logically considered in 
other connections ; i. e. the power in man which, to- 
gether with the agencies affecting its action, it is the 
office of the moral faculty on the authority of moral 
law to control. 

IV. Virtue, the result in man towards the produc- 
tion of which moral faculty, moral law, and will are 
ever to be directed ; and theories of virtue, including 
the question of the ultimate ground of obligation on 
which, in the last analysis, the authority of conscience 
and moral law must rest, and to which will must be 
conformed. 

§ 10. Under one or another of these four divisions 
every ethical principle that bears on human obliga- 
tions in the way either of pointing them out or of 
enforcing compliance with them, and every principle 
that either illustrates the nature and need of true 
virtue, or prescribes the method of acquiring it, may 
receive, without disturbance of logical relations, all the 
attention that a discussion of the philosophy of morals 
may justly require. 



PART II. 

THEORETIC MORALITY. 
DIVISION I. 

THE MORAL FACULTY, OR CONSCIENCE. 

CHAPTER I. 

OF THE TERMS MORAL FACULTY AND CONSCIENCE. 

§ 11. Very different accounts have been given of 
the Moral Faculty. Even writers who have agreed in 
making their ethical systems turn on the Different 
authority of the moral judgments have dif- meanin s s - 
fered materially in the explanations they have given 
of the process by which the judgments are reached. 
So various and even contradictory have been these 
explanations, that some modern authors discard the 
term faculty as unauthorized and misleading. Minute 
statements of the diversities of explanation given would 
too much extend these pages ; only two or three of the 
more strongly marked classes of them will be given. 

§ 12. What has been commonly understood by the 
moral faculty was at one time designated by Shaftes- 
bury, Hutcheson, and their disciples as the The moral 
Moral Sense, — an internal sense being sup- sense - 
posed to exist corresponding to the external bodily 
senses, — and they maintained that the right and wrong 

25 



26 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

of actions were immediately apprehended in feelings 
or moral sensations which the acts imparted through 
the internal sense to the soul. All that now survives 
of this theory in current thought is the popular use of 
the phrase " moral sense " as a synonym for conscience. 
§ 13. By another class of writers the phrase moral 
faculty has been made to denote a special endowment 

As ecial or ^ acn ^J °^ tne sou ^ wnose one exclusive 
faculty of office is to discern moral differences and by 
its judgments to enforce moral obligations. 
They regard it as a special faculty of the mind that 
in its own light distinguishes between right acts and 
wrong acts, either itself furnishing the principles by 
which it judges, or intuitively apprehending them as 
immutable truths or laws. Among those of this class, 
some of whom emphasize the perceptional, and others 
the emotional, element of the judgments rendered by 
the moral faculty, may be mentioned Butler, Price 
(English), Eeid, Stewart, Calderwood (Scotch), Kant 
(German), "Wayland, and Alexander (American). 

§ 14. Another, and at present increasing class of 
writers, denying the existence of a moral faculty, sum 
up all that is usually ascribed to it under 
sentiment ^ e § enera ^ designation of the Moral Senti- 
ments. This class began with Hume and 
Adam Smith, who resolved all that is usually called 
moral faculty into sympathetic feeling. Hartley and 
J. S. Mill resolved all into association of ideas, — main- 
taining that children, trained from the beginning to 
pleasant experiences from one kind of acts and to 
painful experiences from another kind, soon learn to ap- 



MORAL FACULTY AND CONSCIENCE. 27 

prove the first and disapprove the second. Conscience 
with them is nothing more nor less than certain kinds 
of moral feelings or sentiments which are the direct 
product of individual experiences. Others still of this 
class, accepting the doctrine of evolution and the law of 
heredity, and carrying the origin of the moral feelings 
or sentiments far back into the prehistoric times of our 
race, resolve conscience into inherited feelings, — "in- 
stincts," Leslie Stephen calls them, — which prompt to 
one kind of actions and disincline to another. Through 
the experience of countless generations, actions tending 
to the preservation of human life and the production 
of human pleasure have evolved in the race sentiments 
towards the repetition of these actions ; and actions 
tending to the diminution of life and pleasure have 
evolved sentiments of aversion to them. Conscience 
is simply these inherited sentiments. Writers of this 
general class strenuously object to the terms moral 
faculty and conscience as unauthorized and deceptive. 
§ 15. All writers, however, with whatever views of 
conscience, are agreed that man is capable of moral 
judgments. But whatever mental or moral 
function man is capable of, there would men ts require 
seem to be no good reason for refusing to amoral 
say that he has a faculty for. The corre- 
late of faculty (facultas, the power that easily [facile ] 
acts) is capacity. Whatever one has a capacity to do 
he has a faculty for doing. Man perceives, recalls, 
deliberates, and decides, and it is well understood what 
is meant when it is said that for each of these func- 
tions he has a faculty. 



28 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

No sane person supposes that for each mental func- 
tion the mind has a distinct and separate power or 
Not a faculty or g an > corresponding to the separate bodily 
as distinct organs for distinct bodily functions. As it 
mental is the whole mind or indivisible ego that 

powers. perceives, recalls, deliberates, and decides, 

so it is the whole indivisible mind or ego that renders 
moral judgments ; and judgments of whatever kind re- 
quire a faculty that renders them. 1 

§ 16. If it still further be objected to the use of the 
term moral faculty, that the mental process through 
which the mind passes in reaching a moral judgment 
is precisely the same as that through which any other 
judgment is reached, and therefore there is no such 
thing as a distinctive moral faculty, we must reply, 
that it is a well-established usage that we distinguish 
between faculties by epithets derived from 

FclCllltlQS 

distinguished the objects on which they are exercised. 
objection* Capacity being the correlate of faculty, we 
which they often say that such an one has capacity 
are exercised. ^ i an g ua g e an( j not f or mathematics, or 

for mathematics and not for language ; so with equal 
propriety we say one has the mathematical faculty, 



1 President Porter, in his Elements of Moral Science, not only objects (p. 244) 
to calling conscience "a separate and special faculty, for the reason that there 
is no such faculty," but he seems unwilling to regard it as a faculty at all, 
though he does not hesitate to speak of it as capable of being "cultivated," 
and as " in one sense " having " supreme authority." If I understand him, his 
view of conscience is not essentially unlike that here taken. He says, " Con- 
science is the intellect and sensibility employed upon a special subject-matter." 
He does not hesitate throughout his treatise to speak of "moral judgments" ; 
why, then, hesitate to regard the judgments as rendered by conscience as a 
faculty, though the faculty in its exercise be a combined action of " intellect 
and sensibility " ? 



MORAL FACULTY AND CONSCIENCE. 29 

the linguistic faculty, the poetic faculty ; just as on the 
same principle we speak of a scientific or a historical 
imagination, or of a verbal memory and the like. If, 
furthermore, it be claimed that moral judgments are 
nothing more than intellectual discriminations accom- 
panied by the emotions awakened through recognition 
of the moral qualities of the objects judged, the claim 
may be admitted, and yet ample reason remain for 
ascribing the judgments to a moral faculty. 

§ 17. In fact, the moral faculty is only that rational 
power of the soul by which all distinctions of Moral faculty 
whatever kind are perceived and judgments is reason 
pronounced, and which is properly called mora/ 
moral only when the distinctions perceived questions. 
are moral, and the judgments rendered are according 
to some recognized moral standard. It is the reason 
or whole rational being occupied with moral questions 
and giving some kind of moral decisions. Whatever 
the designation of the faculty that discriminates and 
judges, whether intelligence, understanding, or reason, 
by the same term, qualified by the epithet moral, we 
may designate the faculty which, through application 
of some kinds of tests admitted to be authoritative, 
discriminates between moral qualities. 

§ 18. We thus find that the moral faculty is simply 
the reason awakening moral emotions, and 
awakening them by moral judgments. The me nts require 
judgments are moral because they are de- amoral 
cisions made in view of moral laws which 
reason itself accepts as ultimate and inexorable. The 
emotions are an indivisible part of the judgments; 



30 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

emotions never existing apart from the judgments, 
and the judgments never failing to awaken emotions. 
To suppose that there can be moral sentiments or 
feelings without moral judgments is as unreasonable 
as to suppose that there can be any other class of 
effects without adequate causes; and no one can be 
unreasoning enough to suppose there can be judg- 
ments of any kind without a mental power or faculty 
that judges. If there be moral sentiments, no ra- 
tional explanation can be given of them except that 
which traces them to a mental faculty that is also 
not inappropriately called the moral faculty. 

§ 19. If it still be asked how moral emotions can 
spring; from merely rational self-judgments, 

Moral emo- f , . . . 

tions from the answer is simple and plain. As rational 
intellectual b^gg we are so constituted as to be always 

judgments. ° J 

moved by whatever clearly accords with, or 
violates, truth and our recognized rules of right ; our 
emotions are precisely accordant with what we have 
accepted as unquestionable laws, canons or standards, of 
judgment. In contemplating a work of art, we have 
pleasant or painful emotions precisely as it fulfils or 
violates our accepted canons of criticism. So also in 
judging conduct or character our emotions are pleasant 
or painful according as what we have accepted as 
rules or laws determinative of moral obligations are 
fulfilled or violated. The ground of the emotions is 
in the very constitution and nature of rational beings 
as such. To be rational and capable of moral dis- 
tinctions is to be susceptible of moral emotions. 
§ 20. It is just here that we discern the difference in 



MORAL FACULTY AND CONSCIENCE. 31 

meaning that ought always to be observed in the use 
of the terms moral faculty and conscience. Difference 
The former is more comprehensive than the beween 

1 moral faculty 

latter ; the one denoting a generic and the and con- 
other a special function and office. The for- science * 
mer denotes the soul's power to judge all kinds of 
moral acts, by whomsoever performed ; the latter, the 
soul's power to judge its own acts and itself as the 
doer of them. The difference is not in the nature of 
the faculty, but in the function performed and in the 
emotional results that follow. We find in conscious- 
ness a clear distinction between the emotions awak- 
ened by judgments on the acts of others and of 
ourselves. In the emotions awakened by a judgment 
on one's own bad acts there is an element that never 
enters into the emotions from a judgment of the acts 
of others. Nero's bad acts and character bring disgust 
and strong condemnation ; one's own bad acts bring 
condemnation and remorse. Both classes of emotions 
are produced by the exercise of the moral faculty; 
but in the one it is the moral faculty in its generic 
function ; in the other it is the moral faculty in its 
distinctive and restricted office of the conscience. 

Conscience is thus simply the reason, — the moral 
reason, if one prefers so to call it, — passing 

,. . . Conscience 

judgments on acts with distinct conscious- the soul's 
ness that the acts judged are one's own. moral 

J ° . judiciary. 

It is the soul's inquisition with itself. It 
is an unappeasable demand of the rational being 
for self-judgment. It is the moral judiciary of the 
individual soul, the judge and the arraigned being 



32 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

one and the same person. 1 It is that rational power 
by which the soul, with inwardly responsive emotions, 
and in obedience to an inward and inexorable necessity, 
judges itself and its own acts the instant the character 
of itself and its acts is disclosed. The specific office of 
conscience is judicial, though its judgments are never 
unattended with emotions. It judges, not in its own 
light by rules which itself supplies, but in accordance 
with such light as the soul by use of its other powers 
has gathered around itself. Amid such light as sur- 
rounds it, the soul, by a necessity of its own nature, 
through its conscience judges itself and its acts. 

§ 21. In treating of conscience, it is important that 
Conscience we not on ty consider it as a power for a 
as a faculty, special moral office, but that we also deter- 

a function, . .,. , , 

and a judg- mine, with as much care and precision as pos- 
ment. sible, what its real office is, and then that we 

examine minutely into the nature and authority of its 
decisions. In this way shall we best be able to under- 
stand existing controversies and find our way amid 
divergent and conflicting views. No mental power can 
be rightly understood without considering it equally 
as an endowment, as performing a given office, and 
as yielding a given result ; and the conscience, if we 
would rightly understand it, must be carefully scru- 
tinized, first as an endowment ; secondly, as perform- 
ing a special office ; and thirdly, as giving a special 
kind of judgments. 

1 Kant, in his Metaphy sic pf Ethics, Chap. III., Sec. 13, says : "Conscience 
must represent to itself always some one other than itself as Judge, unless 
it is to arrive at a contradiction with itself." Conscience in its judgments, of 
course, simply enforces law, or a supreme will which law enounces. 



CHAPTEE II. 

ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 

§ 22. Is the conscience as a faculty an inborn, 
original endowment, or is it the result of - „„■»„„„ 

<=> Is conscience 

experience ? The question naturally subdi- inborn, or 
vides itself into two others, viz.: First, is pro uce 
conscience in the individual inborn, or is it the product 
of training and experience ? And secondly, was con- 
science originally in the race, or has it been evolved by 
hereditary transmission and accumulation of emotional 
experiences ? 

§ 23. I. Is conscience the product of individual 
training and experience ? To this question in the 
sensationalist philosophers ("experiential- indlvldua1 ' 
ists"), from Hartley down 1 till the announcement of 
the theory of evolution, replied in the affirmative. In 
answer to the question, however, it may be said, — 

1. If any power or faculty of a rational being can be 
shown to be original, and not the product of As innatQ 
experience or education, the conscience can. as reason. 
To be a rational being at all is to be a moral being 
with a moral faculty. Season does not more imme- 
diately and necessarily distinguish between the physi- 
cal qualities of bodies, or the intellectual qualities of 

i James Mill, J. S. Mill, Bain on The Emotions and the Will, Chap. XV. 



34 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

minds and thoughts, than it does between the moral 
qualities of acts ; and the physical qualities of things 
and intellectual qualities of persons are not more indu- 
bitably real than are the moral qualities of acts. If 
the reason be in any sense an original endowment, — 
experientialists prior to the theory of evolution ad- 
mitted it to be inborn from the beginning of the 
race, — then the conscience must be innate, since it is 
but one and the same discriminating or rational power, 
and a power that is employed now upon objects with 
qualities purely physical or intellectual, and now upon 
objects with qualities strictly moral. And we are 
clearly conscious of distinct kinds of emotions accord- 
ing to the special objects with which our rational 
power is occupied ; the emotions when the objects are 
moral being distinctively moral emotions, and recog- 
nized as such in consciousness. 

2. Education, training, and experience can do no 
Canbe more and no less for the conscience than 

educated. they can for any other faculty. The prompt- 
ness, vigor, authority, and accuracy with which con- 
science acts will depend on the practice and training 
to which it has been subjected, but no amount of cul- 
ture or experience can originate it, any more than they 
can originate the reason, the memory, or the will ; or 
in fact than they can originate the rational being. 
The conscience, regarded as the soul's demand and 
capacity for moral distinctions, and for moral judg- 
ments with responsive emotions, is an integrant part 
of human nature as such, and is as universal as the 
human race. 



ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 35 

3. The assumption that conscience is the product 

of education and training rests upon a con- 

„ P T p Moral senti- 

fusion of ideas. It confounds the faculty me nts con- 
of conscience with its products, — with its founded 

with faculty. 

judgments and the resulting emotions. The 
same act may he regarded with dissimilar and even 
opposing judgments by two persons who have received 
dissimilar trainings. But it is the standards by which 
they judge, and not the faculty that judges, which their 
training has given them. When it is affirmed that 
because two children differently trained may regard 
the same act with opposite emotions, therefore con- 
science must be the work of education, it is evident 
that the faculty is confounded with its judgments and 
emotions. Misled by defective or false standards, that 
is, judging by mistaken laws of right, its judgments 
may be wholly false ; but the faculty itself no amount 
of training, and no deficiency or falsity of standard, 
can ever give or utterly take away. There can be no 
emotion, call it by whatever name we will, without 
thought; and there can be no thought without a 
faculty for thinking. 

Conscience in childhood, like all the other childish 
faculties, may act very imperfectly, and the Conseien ce 
products of the faculty, like other childish m children, 
judgments, be defective and erroneous; but the con- 
science itself, like every other native endowment, is 
as clearly possessed by the child as by the adult. And 
the moral emotions of children, under instruction, are 
as vivid and strong, whatever the degree of truth in 
their standards of judgment, as are those of mature 



36 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

age. Whatever may be the effect of education on the 
moral judgments, and so on the emotions or moral 
sentiments which the judgments awaken, the con- 
science itself is as clearly an original endowment as 
any other of the constituent principles of the personal 
being. But there are those who maintain that all 
human rationality, — including all that goes by the 
name of conscience and moral sentiments, — has been 
naturally evolved through the progressive experiences 
of mankind, and experiences that primarily were noth- 
ing but physical sensations. 

§ 24. II. The next question then before us is, can 

conscience in the race be accounted for on 

science been the theory of evolution ? Can it have been 

evolved in ^he p ro duct of social environment? Has 

the race ?. . .. 

it been created m man by the treatment 
which different kinds of acts have received from 
human society? Is it the accumulated result of the 
pleasurable and painful experiences of the race trans- 
mitted through an indefinite number of generations ? 
§ 25. 1. Affirmative answers to these several ques- 
tions have been given on the basis of the theory that 
Affirmative whatever distinguishes man from the lowest 
answers. form of animal intelligence has been the 
natural product of mechanically acting and reacting 
forces. The human intelligence, and even that most 
distinguishing characteristic of man, consciousness, 
have been evolved, it is claimed, through excitation of 
a nervous system, — animal sensation has evolved into 
consciousness, and within the consciousness have been 
evolved by experience the moral sentiments, — what 
in other words is called conscience. 



ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 37 

But to these answers there are various objections : 
(a) If sensation, which is a product of some kind 
of physical force, has been evolved through But con . 
physical experiences into consciousness, then sciousness 
consciousness is a physical effect; and a physical 
physical effect can be conscious of itself; effect - 
and consciousness ought to be spoken of in terms of 
mechanical philosophy. But between any form or 
effect of physical force and consciousness there is a 
difference which no rhetorical phrase can conceal, a 
chasm which no science has yet bridged. 

( b ) If, as evolutionists maintain, actions are to be 
regarded as good or bad according to their utility in 
producing pleasurable or painful feelings, Inconeeiv . 
and these feelings constitute the moral sen- able how 
timents, and the moral sentiments are the can become 
conscience ; then one of two conclusions sentiments ; 

or emotions 

follows : either the feelings are merely phys- exist without 
ical sensations mechanically produced, — in JU gmen s ' 
which case it is impossible to understand how physical 
sensations can properly be called sentiments at all, 
moral, unmoral, or immoral ; or else the feelings must 
be emotions, — in which case it is difficult to under- 
stand or to conceive how there can be emotions with- 
out some kind of perceptional judgments ; and least of 
all how there can be moral emotions without some 
kind of moral judgments, and a moral faculty that 
judges. 

(c) But if we grant all that can be claimed for 
evolution as accounting for the moral sentiments, and 
grant that these sentiments constitute all that is called 



38 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

conscience, it yet remains true that evolution can give 
no satisfactory account of the imperative tone, the unap- 
imperative- pealable authority, with which conscience 
ness of always speaks. 1 Environments, which evo- 

conseience J r > 

unaccounted lutionists make so much of an engendering 
moral sentiments, can awaken at the most 
only a prudential regard for consequences, prompting 
to such actions as on the whole it is believed will bring 
the largest amount of satisfaction, and dissuading from 
those that on the whole it is believed will bring more 
pain than pleasure. Prudence, which is merely cau- 
tious foresight, calculates and temporizes; conscience, 
whose distinctive function is to pronounce authori- 
tative judgments on purposes and acts, is decisive, 
absolute, and unappealable. Painful experiences from 
environments may lead to the cultivation of a pruden- 
tial care to avoid a repetition of the experiences, and 
pleasant experiences to the cultivation of a care to 
have them repeated. But the emotions springing from 
a perceived imprudence are very unlike those springing 
from a perceived violation of moral obligation. How 
a mere prudence, which may have been evolved from 
experience, is, or can be, transformed into a judicial 
faculty, from whose decisions there is no appeal, is not 
clear nor even conceivable. 2 

1 Leslie Stephen, in his Science of Ethics, Chap. VIII. Sect. 54, says, " Con- 
science is the utterance of the public spirit of the race ordering us to obey the 
primary conditions of its welfare." 

2 " If you have nothing to work with but animal pleasures and pains, and 
unlimited time for their experience and transmission, you can never hope 
through all eternity to build up a conscience ; or if you do, you build up what 
your data will not support, and you will have to let fall as an illusion. In- 
herited accumulation of experiences may account for an ever quicker and finer 
and larger sense of expediency, but for nothing else ; as an infinitude of sand- 



ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 39 

(d) But evolution, at its best, fails to account for 
the "moral" in its explanation of the origin of the 
moral sentiments. The sentiments, accord- The "moral" 
nig to evolutionists, have been directly and of moral 

sentiments 

efficiently caused 1 by the pleasurable and unaccounted 
painful experiences of the race, — experi- for# 
ences that in themselves were strictly non-moral. But 
if the doctrine of causality be accepted, of course it 
must also be admitted that there can be no more in 
any effect than there was in its cause. And yet the 
smiles and frowns that begat the first pleasurable and 
painful experiences in the race were non-moral ; and 
the acts upon which the smiles and frowns were first 
visited must, according to the evolution theory, have 
been non-moral. The treatment the acts received was 
not on account of any recognized moral element in 
them; that element is conceived to have been im- 
parted by a treatment that was not only not moral, but 
may have been even immoral. How treatment that 
had no moral purpose in it could have awakened moral 
emotions, — could have implanted the moral sentiment, 
evolution does not and cannot explain. 

§ 26. 2. In support of the theory of the evolution 
of the moral sentiment — the conscience — it has been 
suggested that fear, and the shame supposed to be ex- 
hibited by certain domestic animals, were either the 

grains may make a shore, and an infinitude of drops a sea, but neither effect can 
take the place of the other. Add as long as you will, if the items of the sum are 
all prudences, the total will not come out as a duty." —J as. Martineau, On 
the Relation between Ethics and Religion. 

1 " The idea of cause will govern at the end as it has at the beginning. The 
idea of cause cannot be abolished except by the abolition of thought itself." — 
Herbert Spencer, Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte. 



40 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

germs of what have evolved into the moral sentiment 
in man, or that the moral sentiment, the conscience 
„ of man, is only a special form either of fear 

Has con- >> *- 

science been or f shame, or of both. Thus a dog, it is 
f JaVor said, when tempted to repeat an offence for 

shame? which he has been beaten, betrays a feeling 
of fear or shame which in a man's breast, and with 
a man's environment, speedily develops into, or itself, 
in both dog and man, really is the moral sentiment. 
Let us inquire, then, 

First. Whether, granting that moral sentiment is 
all that can be meant by conscience, there is any good 
is it from reason for regarding it as having been evolved 
fear? from fear in a lower animal-stage of the 

race ? When a higher organ or power is evolved from 
a lower, the lower, according to the evolution theory, 
either becomes abortive or is merged into the higher. 
But man has both fear and conscience. Fear in him is 
as strong as it is in any lower animal, if not stronger. 
But the germ cannot coexist with the matured product 
into which it is assumed to have been developed. 

Secondly. Is conscience a special form of fear ? Fear 

is a mere apprehension of danger, always ceasing with 

the known cessation of danger, and may be 

Is conscience ° J 

a species of awakened by instinct, or by knowledge ac- 
quired through experience. But conscience 
judges neither by instinct nor by the knowledge of 
experience, but by recognized law. In fact, the emo- 
tions or awards of conscience are an essential part of 
the sanctions of moral law. Its awards are the com- 
placential or displacential emotions that spring up at 



ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 41 

once on perception of the agreement or disagreement 
of one's acts with the sacred authority of moral law. 
But the feeling of mere fear for offences is only the 
dread of penalty, and cares little or nothing for the 
authority of law whose penalty has been incurred. 
Thus one culprit may have great fear of the penalty 
of civil law or of society, and no compunction of 
conscience; another may have great compunction of 
conscience and no fear of penalty, civil or social. The 
pangs of conscience are not from fear of penalty, but 
are the essence of moral penalty itself, falling like 
a blight on the soul at sight of the violated author- 
ity and majesty of moral law, and of the infinite 
Lawgiver. 

Thirdly. Can conscience have been evolved from 
the sense of shame ? The external signs of shame in 
man are well understood. From similar was con- 
signs the existence of shame in certain do- evolved from 



mestic animals, e. g. the dog and the horse, 
has been inferred, whence conscience may have been 
evolved. But conscience and the sense of shame co- 
exist in man, and though closely akin in nature are 
clearly and wholly distinct. Conscience cannot have 
been evolved from the sense of shame. 

Fourthly. Can conscience and shame be identified? 
The remorse of conscience and the feeling of shame 
undoubtedly both proceed from self-iudg- T 

J r j & Is conscience 

ments. They may arise from one and the identical 

, P t P • t , t , n with shame ? 

same act of self-judgment, and at one and 

the same instant. They also have many points of 

resemblance and affinity ; but they never change from 



42 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

one into the other; they never coalesce; and they 
never need be mistaken the one for the other. Ee- 
morse always has the moral element in it, and is the 
direct effect of a judgment of conscience on a perceived 
violation of moral obligation. The feeling of shame 
may or may not have the moral element in it, and 
proceeds from a self-judgment in view of a violated 
rule of propriety. Eemorse springs from a felt injury 
to one's own character ; shame, from a felt loss of repu- 
tation. Eemorse is a feeling of guilt ; shame, a feeling 
of disgrace. Eemorse is the felt condemnation of self 
by self and by the Divine Being; shame, is the felt 
loss of the respect of self and of fellow-beings. 

Fifthly. It should also be remembered that the judg- 
ments of conscience are complacential as well as dis- 
placential, while the emotions of the sense 

Emotions of 

conscience of both fear and shame correspond only to 
centiai°!^ P d la " the displacential side of the moral judg- 
dispiacen- ments. In fact, it is through the compla- 

tial. 

cential office of conscience that personal 
virtue is really built up ; the displacential is not con- 
structive, but only negative, deterrent, and punitive. 
By far the larger, and, in all character-building, the 
more effective portion of the moral judgments of every 
right-minded man are approbative rather than condem- 
natory. There is, therefore, no reason for regarding 
conscience as only a higher degree of shame, and no 
excuse whatever for confounding conscience with either 
shame or fear. 

§ 27. But between the theory of an evolved con- 
science and the historical fact of a development of 



ORIGIN OF THE CONSCIENCE. 43 

moral ideas and of practical morality, there is, how- 
ever, a wide difference. Evidence of the latter is by- 
no means evidence of the former. Both individuals 
and races have often made great and rapid strides in 
the apprehension of moral obligations and Conscience 

■,. ^ • n not evolved 

m a correspondingly progressive conform- by pr0 g res . 
ity with the obligations. But progress in sive morality, 
moral ideas and in practical morality cannot be shown 
to have evolved, in the sense of originating, either the 
power of moral discernment, or the power of moral 
decisions by which progress is made. A capacity for 
moral discernment must have existed before any moral 
ideas could have been discerned, and there must have 
been a capacity for moral improvement before the first 
step towards it could have been taken. Reactionary 
influence from the progressive action of any one of the 
human powers may serve to give it vigor and facility 
of action, but nothing more. As well might we main- 
tain that the fruit of the vine proves the origination 
by evolution of the stock of the vine, as to maintain 
that the mental and moral products of man prove his 
mental or moral powers to have been originated by 
evolution. The experiences of men have doubtless 
clarified and widened their moral conceptions, thus 
inducing a progressive morality ; 1 but the conscience 
of man has been just as quick in discerning obliga- 
tions, and as decisive and authoritative in enforcing 
compliance with them, in the lower as in the more 
advanced stages of moral progress. 

1 Some little help towards understanding what is here meant may be found 
in a small prosy treatise entitled Progressive Morality, An Essay in Ethics, by 
Thomas Fowler, M. A., LL. D., T. S. A., President of Corpus Christi College, 
Wykeham Prof, of Logic in the University of Oxford. 



CHAPTEE III. 

CONSCIENCE AND THE MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

§ 28. It is necessary that we here determine the 
relation and the difference between conscience and the 
Coexistence moral consciousness. They are so uniformly 
of conscience coexistent, and so indivisibly united that 

and moral . 

conscious- they have sometimes been regarded as one 
ness * and the same. Some living authors have 

maintained that conscience is only the moral con- 
sciousness. 1 

The two meanings now clearly expressed by the 
words conscience and consciousness were uniformly 
represented in all Latin literature, both classical and 
mediaeval, by the single term conscientia ; and in the 
languages of the peoples known as the Latin races the 
Twofold * w0 meanings are still expressed by single 
meaning of words derived from conscientia. The Greeks 
o-wet<Wis a "^ so ^ ia< ^ ^ut the one word cnWS^cm for 
and con- both meanings. This word frequently oc- 
curs in the New Testament Greek, some- 

1 This is affirmed by Prof. Lorimer of Edinburgh, in his Institutes of Law, 
p. 145. Ex-President Hopkins of Williams College says, in his The Law of Love 
and Love as a Law, Div. I. Chap. 12, " Conscience is the moral consciousness 
of man in view of his own actions as related to Moral Law." Mr. Martin eau 
also repeatedly, both in his well-known review of Whewell's Elements of 
Morality and in his Types of Ethical Theory, speaks of " knowledge with our- 
selves " as " constituting conscience " ; yet he also says that conscience " exer- 
cises simply a judicial function," and is at considerable pains to justify the 
propriety of calling conscience a faculty. See Types, Vol. II. pp. 11, 12. 

44 



CONSCIENCE AND MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 45 

times with one meaning and sometimes with the other, 
and sometimes with a shade of both, though uniformly 
rendered into English, in the old version and the re- 
vised, by the single word conscience. Most of the 
older English writers, notably Shakespeare, use the 
word conscience with both meanings. 1 It is only in 
comparatively later English literature that the distinc- 
tion between conscience and consciousness is fully 
recognized and uniformly observed. 

§ 29. The slow progress made in recognizing and ver- 
bally distinguishing different mental and moral percep- 
tions and emotions is certainly not to be slowprog . 
understood as evidence that the differences ress ** dis - 

. -, , . tinguishing 

have not existed, and that the distinctions internal 
now made are only verbal and imaginary. P rocesses - 
Persistency in the study of self and increasing closeness 
of observation have detected what long escaped atten- 
tion. The Jewish writers of the Old Testament used 
the vague terms "heart," "reins," and "inward parts," 
to denote the inner moral powers of the soul, but after 
centuries of progressive self-knowledge the apostles 
Peter and Paul, and the writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, were enabled, under the light of Christianity 
and by help of the Alexandrian Greek, to use the more 
exact and incomparably clearer word o-wetS^o-is. This 

1 In Ms Winter's Tale, III. 2, Shakespeare makes Hermione say to her hus- 
band Leontes, King of Sicilia, "I appeal to your own conscience," manifestly 
meaning his own consciousness. In Timon, II. 2, Timon is made to say to his 
steward Flavius, 

" Canst thou the conscience lack 
To think I shall lack friends?" 

here again manifestly meaning consciousness. Instances in which Shakespeare 
uses conscience as the self-judging faculty are too numerous and well known 
to need citation. 



46 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY 

word seems to have been first used in Greek by a Stoic 
philosopher, 1 nearly two centuries before the Christian 
era, and a whole century after the founding of the 
Stoic school, but he used it only in the sense of con- 
sciousness, leaving no trace of his having used that or 
any other term in the sense of conscience. But when 
the Christian era began, both writers in Greek 2 at 
Alexandria and the Stoics 3 at Eome had come to rec- 
ognize clearly the distinctive existence of conscience 
as well as of consciousness, though they had but a 
single word for both meanings, the connection alone 
showing in which it was used. The process has been 
long and slow through which we have come to the use 
of the two terms for the two meanings in English, 4 and 

1 Chrysippus, a fragment from whose writings, found in Diogenes Laertius, 
has been repeatedly cited by German authors who have written on the use 
of o-uveiSvjo-is in Greek philosophy. See Ueber den Begriff Geivissen in der 
griechischen Philosophic, p. 11, von Dr. J. Jahnel, Gymnasiallehrer zu Glatz. 
Also Die Lehre von dem Gewissen, p. 17, von Dr. Rudolph Hofmann, 
Prof, zu Leipzic. 

2 Philo, an Alexandrian Jew and a voluminous philosophical writer, says: 

" Conscience is an incorruptible judge Who is there who does wrong who 

is not convicted by his own conscience as if he were in a court of justice, even 
though no man correct him?"— Vol. IV. pp. 243, 265, Bohn's ed. of Translat. 
of Philo's works. 

3 Seneca says: "Bona conscientia turbam advocat, mala etiam in solitudine 
anxia et solicita est. Si honesta sunt qua; facis, omnes sciant ; si turpia facis, 
quid refert neminem scire, cum tu scias? O te miserum, si contemnis hunc 
testeni." — Ep. 43. " Conscientia aliud agere non patitur ac subinde respondere 
ad se cogit." — Ep. 105. 

* It would doubtless be a most interesting and profitable study to trace the 
process here referred to through Saxon, broken Saxon, and early English. In 
the Ancren Riwle, written in the thirteenth century, we have, according to the 
Camden Society's edition, the phrases, " kunscence of heorte" = consciousness 
of heart ; and " veste of cleane inwit " = the repose of a pure conscience. How 
it should have happened that the significant word "inwit" should have disap- 
peared and " kunscence " should have absorbed its meaning would be worth 
knowing, if it could be ascertained. 



CONSCIENCE AND MOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS. 47 

there is no excuse now for not continuing the use. 
The Germans above all other peoples seem to have 
early distinguished between the two meanings, ex- 
pressing that of conscience by Geivissen and that of 
consciousness by Bewusstsein. 

§ 30. The actual difference between the conscience 
and the moral consciousness is clearly marked, and, 
when conscience is viewed simply as a fac- Beal dif f er _ 
ulty, is not unlike the difference between enee between 

. . conscience 

reason and the intellectual consciousness, andcon- 
The intellectual consciousness is that con- sciousness - 
dition of the mind without which there can be no cogni- 
tion, — is that state of mind into which we are brought 
by exercise of our perceptive and cognitive powers, — is 
the knowing with ourselves that we know, — whenever 
we exercise our rational powers. So also the moral 
consciousness is that state of mind into which we 
are brought whenever we make moral distinctions, — 
whenever conscience pronounces moral judgments, i. e. 
whenever reason is dealing with moral questions. The 
moral consciousness is simply a state of mind that 
accompanies all moral perceptions and all moral judg- 
ments. It cannot exist without some kind of moral 
perceptions and judgments, and there can be no 
moral perceptions and judgments of which we are not 
conscious. But the conscience by which we judge, and 
the consciousness we have of the judgments with ac- 
companying emotions, are too distinct to admit, without 
a protest, of their being confounded. 

Thus the emotions attendant on our moral judg- 
ments are always emotions of which we are conscious. 



48 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

They are in fact only the existing states and modes of 
consciousness of which the moral judgments are the 
Emotions of sufficient cause. When our moral judg- 
!^!^-!! a i ments are on the acts and characters of 

conscious- 
ness, others we are simply conscious of approval 

or of disapproval, — of satisfaction or disgust ; when 
our judgments are on our own acts and on ourselves, 
we are distinctly conscious of complacency or of displa- 
cency, — of self-justification or of self-condemnation. 

§ 31. Not to discriminate between the meanings of 
the terms conscience and moral consciousness is to 
Obscurity of mvorve one ' s se lf m obscurity, if not confu- 
thoughtfrom sion, of thought; as much so, as not to dis- 

notdistin- . . . _. , , .. 

guishing be- criminate m Psychology between the faculty 
tweenthem, f judgment and consciousness. Between a 
mental act and a consciousness of the act, and between 
a mental faculty and the consciousness that accompa- 
nies the exercise of the faculty, there is a distinction 
which clear thinking requires should not be over- 
looked; between conscience that judges self, and a 
consciousness of the judgments and their accompany- 
ing emotions, there is a distinction equally broad which 
clear thinking 1 will carefully observe. 

1 Janet in hi9 Theory of Morals, which contains some excellent special dis- 
cussions, has a chapter entitled The Moral Consciousness, which is devoted 
exclusively to a discussion of conscience and the authority of its judgments. 
There is accordingly a vagueness of purpose in parts of the discussion which 
is all the more perplexing because occurring in the midst of much that is 
luminous and conclusive. Dr. Porter (Elements of Moral Science, p. 244), in 
giving a reason why the term conscience is "accepted" as "the appropriate 
designation of the moral nature, wholly or in part," represents conscience as 
" consciousness intensified into reflection." The meaning of this is not very 
clear. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE MORAL TASTE AND CONSCIENCE. 

§ 32. The relation of the moral taste to conscience 
has not always been kept clearly in mind in ethical 
discussions. Conceptions of this relation Relation of 
are in our day too cloudy, and differ with J£°^_ taste 
different writers. A brief consideration of science, 
it at this point may possibly be of service in saving 
from subsequent obscurity of thought. 1 It may be 
well to consider, 

§ 33. First, what the moral taste really is. In gen- 
eral, it may be said to be a special mode of sensibility 
in relation to moral objects ; a settled con- Moral taste 
dition of the susceptibilities that responds defijied - 
to the presentation of its appropriate moral objects. 
He in whom the condition exists is made aware of its 
existence by a special class of feelings, the emotions 
of the moral taste. The taste is much more a matter 
of feeling — of liking and disliking — than of con- 
sciously discriminating perceptions. 

The chief source of error in respect to the moral 
taste is in not sufficiently distinguishing between it 
and the moral sentiment. This latter is the product of 

1 The evolutionist explanations of the generation and growth of the moral 
feelings or sentiments are very largely, sometimes almost entirely, explanations 
of the education and growth of the moral taste. 



50 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

repeated moral discriminations and formal judgments ; 
but the moral taste may be, and most commonly is, 
Moral taste the result of a blind surrender to spontane- 
£™ra? d ous likes and dislikes. To identify it with 
sentiment. the moral sentiment, or to regard the moral 
sentiment as a compound of which the moral taste is 
a chief ingredient, is to confound a state of the sensi- 
bilities that has been actively and consciously produced 
with one that, springing unconsciously into being from 
spontaneous impulses, has been nurtured into power 
only by example, by associations, and by surrender to 
its control. 

§ 34. 2. Connection of conscience with cultivation 
of the moral taste. The origin of the taste may be in 
Conscience certain constitutional and perhaps heredi- 
torfar tary predispositions, but as a definite and 
moral taste, fixed condition of the moral sensitivity it 
is the result of experience, and is acquired. Continued 
play of the sensibility on given classes of objects is 
sure to result in settled moral tastes. A depraved 
taste is bred by unchecked and uncondemned famil- 
iarity with immoral persons or with immoral objects 
of thought. A pure and refined moral taste is acquired 
by association with persons whose tastes are pure and 
refined, and by familiarity with thoughts and acts 
that are pure and refining. Nothing so speedily and 
effectually corrects a depraved moral taste as giving 
heed to the condemning judgments of an enlightened 
conscience ; and nothing so surely and completely estab- 
lishes a right moral taste as a sincere regard for the 
approving awards of conscience. The taste thrives on 



MORAL TASTE AND CONSCIENCE. 51 

what gratifies it, and if the objects that gratify are base 
and sensual, nothing can prevent final self-accusings ; 
if the objects are grounded in eternal right, — are such 
as an enlightened conscience can always approve, — 
the taste will strengthen with one's years and be a 
source of unending and unmingled delight. 

The real connection of conscience with the cultiva- 
tion of the moral taste may be illustrated by the par- 
allel connection of the critical judgments „,, • ,. 

J ° The esthetic 

with the cultivation of the purely aesthetic taste and the 
taste. The aesthetic taste is created and mora i 
cultivated by contemplation of objects of beauty in 
nature and art. A correct aesthetic taste is acquired 
by exercise of the critical faculty, under guidance of 
correct principles, in judgments on works of nature 
and art; and a correct moral taste may be acquired 
under guidance of moral truth — of true moral law — 
and in obedience to the monitions of conscience. But 
there is this marked difference between the cultivation 
of the aesthetic taste and the moral taste. The emo- 
tions of the aesthetic taste are always at one and 
identical with the emotions of the critical judgments. 
One's aesthetic taste can never be gratified by what 
his critical judgment condemns. He can never really 
like a picture, statue, or poem which his critical faculty 
pronounces faulty. But the emotions of one's moral 
taste may, or may not, agree with the emotions of his 
moral judgment. He may find great satisfaction in an 
act which his conscience condemns, and may greatly 
dislike another act which his conscience approves and 
enjoins. His moral taste will agree or disagree with 



52 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

his moral judgments just in proportion to the as- 
cendency which his conscience may, or may not, have 
acquired over his sensibilities and his moral affections. 
He who always obeys the dictates of his conscience 
will find in due time that the emotions of his moral 
judgments and of his moral tastes will harmonize and 
blend. 

§ 35. 3. Amenableness of the moral taste to the 

conscience. The moral taste acts spontaneously on 

presentation of objects fitted to call it into 

Accounta- r J 

biiity for exercise. As spontaneous, it would at first 
mora as e. ^q^^^ seem to be neither praiseworthy 
nor blameworthy. But a fixed taste has always to be 
acquired; is acquired after many and persistent voli- 
tions, by repeated acts of voluntary attention to objects 
by which the taste is gratified and matured. On these 
objects conscience pronounces its judgments of ap- 
proval or of disapproval, and on the tastes acquired 
by the objects, and for them, corresponding judgments 
will always be passed. And even on the emotions of 
the taste, — the special feelings of pleasure or disgust, 
that are the very essence of the taste, similar judg- 
ments, in all enlightened minds, are sure to fall. A 
man will approve himself for liking what he sees to 
be right, and condemn himself for liking what he sees 
to be wrong ; and will even condemn himself for not 
liking the right and for not disliking the wrong. The 
struggle of a conscientious man with a corrupt taste 
which has long ruled him may be desperate and pro- 
tracted, but persisted in, the victory though long de- 
layed is sure to come. 



MORAL TASTE AND CONSCIENCE. 53 

§ 36. 4. Correctness of the moral taste as related 
to conscience. It is by no means certain that one's 
moral taste is correct because approved by his con- 
science ; or that it is the reverse of correct correctness 
because disapproved. The moral taste is of moral 
cultivated by objects with moral qualities, related to 
But the qualities may be misjudged; the conseience - 
bad may be approved and the good condemned. It 
is possible, therefore, for a corrupt moral taste to have 
the approbation of conscience, and a pure taste to be 
condemned. The taste will be rightly judged if the 
objects that gratify or offend it are rightly judged. 
And one's moral taste will be finally correct in exact 
proportion, first to the degree of agreement of his 
moral judgments with truth and reality, and secondly 
to the degree of control which his moral judgments 
have acquired over his moral feelings. Thus, from 
ill-breeding and low associations one may have be- 
come accustomed to indulge himself in irritating as 
well as coarse and vulgar language, and from a false 
sense of fitness may plume himself on what he mis- 
takenly calls his frankness and plainness of speech. 
An amendment of manners will ensue only when 
an enlightened conscience shall condemn him for a 
violation of moral obligations as well as of moral 
proprieties. 



CHAPTER V. 

CONCLUSIONS RESPECTING CONSCIENCE AS A FACULTY. 

§ 37. If the account we have given of conscience as 
a faculty be a true one, then certain con- 
clusions follow which may be summarized 
as follows: 

1. Conscience is an original endowment of human 

nature, — is an essential and constitutive 
constitutive part of personal being, — is the whole ra- 
part of per- tional power of a person pronouncing moral 

judgments and awakening moral emotions ; 
and, like every native power of man, it can be fully 
understood and explained only by reference to the na- 
ture of the objects on which it is exercised, and to the 
feelings by which its exercise is always accompanied. 

2. The difference in the emotions attendant on the 
moral judgments and on the purely intellectual judg- 
Difference ments is due, not to any difference in the 
between in- faculties pronouncing the judgments, but to 
and moral differences in the objects judged, and in the 
judgments, susceptibilities of our nature to which the 
objects stand related. Thus principles in philosophy, 
or facts in science and in history, will give us certain 
classes of intellectual emotions according to our judg- 
ments of them, and will give us these emotions simply 

54 



CONSCIENCE AS A FACULTY. 55 

because as intellectual beings we are so constituted 
as to be so affected. In like manner a moral judg- 
ment on a moral principle, or on an act clearly rec- 
ognized as right or wrong, or on a character recognized 
as morally good or bad, gives us pleasurable or pain- 
ful emotions because as moral beings we are so con- 
stituted as to be thus affected. 

3. From what has gone before it is evident that 
the term conscience is with strict propriety 

used to denote only the moral faculty in its function of 
distinctive function of judging its possessor conscie 
and his own acts. 

4. The difference in the emotions awakened by a 
judgment of self and a judgment of others is not a 
difference in degree, neither is it wholly a Different 
difference in kind. The acts of others, casu- j^w g^ 
ally regarded, may awaken in us simply and others, 
feelings of pleasure or disgust, according as they gratify 
or offend our moral tastes ; but if regarded with a view 
to any decision on them as good or bad, the emotions 
ensuing will not be wholly unlike those attendant on 
self-judgments. Both are emotions within the moral 
consciousness. But in judging others, the judgment 
is consciously pronounced with a disposition to ap- 
prove or condemn, as the case may require. In judg- 
ing self, the judgment is both consciously pronounced 
and actually, though involuntarily, executed in the 
accompanying emotions. The complacency or the 
compunction, the alternative issues of all self-judg- 
ments, together constitute that distinctive form of the 
moral consciousness known as emotions of conscience, 
and are in fact the only real moral sentiments. 



56 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

5. We must also conclude from what has gone be- 
fore, that the partnership and participation implied by 
self com- tne preposition con in the composition of the 
munes with word conscience (conscientia) is of the indi- 
God, in self- vidual with himself, and not, as some have 
judgments. mam t a ined, of the individual with Deity. 1 
Nothing in the origin of the word gives the slightest 
evidence of any intention to recognize a divine partici- 
pation in human self-judgments. The earlier Stoics, 
with whom the word originated, furnish no ground 
in anything they taught for supposing they had any 
such conception of the relations of the divine with 
the human. The truth seems rather to be that as in 
every instant of consciousness self objectifies and com- 
munes with self, so in every act of self-judgment there 
is the accompanying consciousness that the person 
judged is one's self ; acts of conscience are simply the 
saying to and with ourselves that we have fulfilled 
or violated certain distinctly recognized moral obliga- 
tions. 

6. Conscience and the moral consciousness, which 
so many writers seem disposed to identify, are as dis- 
Conscience tinguishable and distinct as any faculty or 
not identical power of the soul can be distinct from con- 

with moral . 

conscious- sciousness. Mental action and conscious- 
ness. Regs £ tne ac tion always coexist, but are in 
no sense identical, and cannot be spoken of as such 
without confusion of thought. The conscience is the 
soul's capacity for judging itself ; the moral conscious- 
ness is that state into which the mind is brought 

1 See Trench, On the Study of Words; and Martensex, Dogmatics, § 5. 



CONSCIENCE AS A FACULTY. 57 

whenever it is occupied with moral subjects, whether 
the subjects be the conduct and character of others or 
of one's self. A mental state can never exercise a 
function ; it is only the invariable accompaniment 
of a function. 

7. The use of the phrase moral sentiment to denote 
the conscience is as erroneous as would be the use of 
the word sensibility to denote the under- Misuse of 
standing, or of the words feelings and emo- morafsenti- 
tions to denote the cognitive and the judg- ment. 

ing powers of the mind. It is to substitute an effect 
for its cause ; it is to put a passive affection in the 
place of an active power. 

8. The moral sentiment, which evolutionists claim 
to explain the origin of, and which they insist covers 
all that can justly be meant by the phrase moral fac- 
ulty, is much more akin to the moral taste Evolutional 
than it is to the emotions that always ac- ^ t s ™" 
company moral judgments, and which alone moral taste. 
can be properly called moral sentiments. The shock 
that comes to one's moral taste from a criminal act 
which he has seen in another or read of is a very 
different emotion from the sentiment of remorse ac- 
companying a judgment on the same act in himself. 
The likings and dislikings of the moral taste find little 
mercy at the hands of conscience, which can never be 
bribed to do otherwise than to pronounce sentence 
according to law. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIENCE. 

§ 38. It is the function of conscience as the soul's 
judiciary to decide for it every question of personal 
The function right and wrong. In its decisions, the sense 
of conscience. f self-approval is as clear in the breast of 
the consciously innocent as is that of self-condemna- 
tion in the breast of the consciously guilty. The exact 
function of conscience will be made more apparent by 
noticing, 

§ 39. I. Negatively, certain offices sometimes as- 
cribed to it which it manifestly does not fulfil. Ac- 
offices erro- counts are sometimes given of its office 
cru^cM;* 8 " w hi°h seem to make it comprehensive of 
conscience, every mental function that is in any way 
connected with moral reflections and decisions; which 
in fact, see-m to identify it with the whole moral na- 
ture of man. Let us then observe that, 

1. It is no part of the office of conscience to forecast 
the future, — to foresee danger, — to forewarn against 
Does not temptation. The mind apprehends moral 
forewarn. jjgjj. an( j anticipates moral peril just as it 
apprehends or anticipates whatever else is contingent 
and uncertain. And the moral feelings accompanying 
apprehension of moral danger, however they may 
58 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIENCE. 59 

affect the moral consciousness, are not emotions of 
conscience. 

2. It is not its office to pronounce judgment on con- 
jectural acts, or on acts contemplated as de- Does not 
pendent on untried and contingent circum- Judge con- 

■ . . . ieetural and 

stances. Acts in imaginary circumstances contingent 
can easily be pictured to the mind, and acts - 
moral estimates formed of them, and decisions made 
about them as good, bad, or indifferent ; and yet one's 
conscience have nothing whatever to do with either 
process. Itself can pronounce judgment on no act till 
the act has at least taken the form of a clearly denned 
purpose. 

3. It is no part of the office of conscience to settle 
questions of casuistry, — to determine the right or the 
wrong of acts in unfamiliar or unknown Does not 
relations, whether they be simply acts in ttons^of cas- 
contemplation, or complex and unanalyzed uistry. 
acts already performed. The moral quality or qual- 
ities of an act are admitted to be found only in the 
purpose for which it is done. The motive may have 
been one, and in itself simple ; it may have been one, 
but complex ; or there may have been several motives, 
each of which was complex and composed of diverse 
ingredients. But to ascertain the component parts 
of one's purpose or purposes may require rigid self- 
scrutiny and careful analysis ; but to participate in 
the scrutiny and analysis is no part of the function 
of conscience. When, however, the inner spirit and 
purpose of one's act are disclosed, and the moral laws 
fulfilled or broken by the act are clearly shown, con- 



60 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

science performs at once and with authority its func- 
tion of judging the right or the wrong of purpose, act, 
and self that has acted. 

4. To furnish laws for its own judgments is not an 
office of conscience. It can neither supply nor set 
Does not fur- aside, neither enact nor annul, moral laws, 
it^ownjudg- -^ there comes before one for judgment some 
ments. act for which he has no criterion — no law 
or rule that is applicable — it is not the function of 
his conscience to furnish one ; or if there come before 
him an act against which he has often decided by a 
law whose authority has now become doubtful to him, 
it is not the prerogative of his conscience either to vin- 
dicate the law or to set it aside. The function of 
conscience is not legislative but judicial; and it can- 
not judge without law which the united powers of the 
whole personal being have accepted as authoritative. 

5. Conscience cannot determine for any one the gen- 
uineness, or the authenticity, or the justice, of a moral 

Cannot de- ^ aw tnat ^ s f° r tne ^ rs ^ ^ me announced to 
cide the gen- hi m . When such a law comes, the mind 

uineness or . . . . 

justice of a instinctively — by necessity of its own na- 
new law. £ ure __ summons i n council the whole circle 
of its discriminating powers, reason, memory, and im- 
agination for an examination of its credentials. 1 These 

1 How moral laws are revealed and authenticated to individuals will engage 
our attention further on. Dr. Porter, in his Elements of Moral Science, p. 149, 
says : "That man should be able to find the norm of his activity in himself 
follows from his being self-conscious and rational. As self-conscious he under- 
stands the relative excellence of the impulses which his nature provides for, 
and the supreme end to which his nature points. As rational and capable of 
self-direction, he must propose to himself the best as the norm or aim of his 
impulses whenever these are made voluntary, and must invariably impose this 
on his will as its law." 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIENCE. 61 

satisfactorily determined, and the law accepted, the 
moral consciousness responds at once to its authority. 
The law is thenceforward written on the heart and is 
applied as a rule of conduct. So long as kept by 
memory in consciousness it will be so applied. But 
the office of consciousness in furnishing the law which 
the whole soul has previously accepted, and according 
to which judgment is rendered, is not to be confounded 
with the judicial function of the power by which the 
law is applied in judgment. 1 

By thus determining what does not properly belong 
to the function of conscience we are brought natu- 
rally and necessarily to a positive statement of, 

§ 40. II. The real function of conscience. Real function 
The simple facts in respect to its real f unc- of conscience, 
tions are as follows : 

1. Its judgments are always the expression of a 
sense of obligation as enforced by recognized moral 
law. Without law conscience is dumb. In Simply en _ 
the presence of a law that is uncertain, or forces moral 
apparently in conflict with some other that 
is well known and accepted, it still is silent. When 
the authority of all moral precepts is discarded then 
all moral judgments cease : 

"And the state of man 
Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
The nature of an insurrection." 

Hence the disaster — the upheaval and overthrow 

1 It would not be difficult to cite from writers on Ethics instances in which 
the several offices here denied to conscience have been either implicitly or 
explicitly ascribed to it. 



62 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

that comes to individuals and nations alike when faith 
in moral obligations is lost. 

2. Its decisions are always in accordance with what 
the whole mind has been constrained to accept as 
judges only authoritative law. The law may have been 
i7funyIc- Ch gi yen m some intuitively apprehended prin- 
cepted. ciple ; or in some dogmatic instruction ac- 
cepted as authoritative ; or it may have been learned 
by personal inquiry, observation, and experience ; or 
it may have been discovered in some individual ex- 
ample and generalized in thought into a universal rule. 
But by some method, and through some kind of reve- 
lation, the law must have become known and been 
thoroughly assented to, and must be clearly in con- 
sciousness at the moment of judgment, or no decision 
can be rendered. 

3. All men necessarily acknowledge some kind of 
moral laws, and in accordance with them pronounce 
some kind of judgments on themselves and their acts ; 
some kinds *■ e - tne conscience of every man, after some 
of moral fashion and with some degree of accuracy, 

self-judg- & J 

ments in- performs its function. And there is no good 
evxtabie. reason to doubt that mankind as a whole 
are so constituted that they cannot fail to have some 
real knowledge of moral law, — that they cannot be 
brought as they are into correlation with innumerable 
sources of moral knowledge, and not discern some of 
the immutable moral laws that bind them into rela- 
tion with the rest of the moral universe. The laws 
thus learned and recognized as authoritative their 
consciences will apply to their moral conduct. As 



THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIENCE. 63 

the mind cannot but perceive what is distinctly pre- 
sented to it ; nor the cognitive faculty but distinguish 
between objects that differ ; nor the consciousness but 
report what is in it; nor the will but choose between 
alternatives ; so the conscience cannot but apply to 
the conduct of its possessor such moral laws as the 
mind may be acquainted with. 

4. The certainty and necessity with which the func- 
tion of conscience is performed do not always and ne- 
cessarily insure accuracy of judgments. The Necessity 
moral perceptions are so liable from various of faction 

. . does not in- 

causes to be obscured ; the dogmatic mstruc- sure accurate 
tions to be erroneous ; the inquiries at the J ud s ments - 
wrong sources ; the supposed intuitions to be mistakes, 
that the knowledge of moral laws may be greatly de- 
fective, and the decisions very wide from the right. 
The function of conscience is nevertheless just as real, 
and just as necessary and trustworthy, as is that of 
reason in any of its manifold offices ; both judge ac- 
cording to the light they have, and both may follow 
a light that misleads. 

5. The accuracy with which conscience performs 
its function depends on the accuracy with which the 
other mental functions have been per- 
formed. If ignorance, prejudice, supersti- dependent on 
tion, fanaticism, bigotry, vice, obscure one's other mental 

° ^ functions. 

perception of the laws under which he ex- 
ists, his conscience will perform its function with an 
imperfection strictly proportionate to the obscurity of 
his moral perceptions ; and if the obscurity is due to 
wilful neglect, conscience sooner or later will inflict 



64 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

its penalty for the negligence. The natural and neces- 
sary sequences of the violation of the laws of the moral 
being are certain in due time to reveal themselves ; and 
these consequences setting the laws violated directly 
before the conscience will elicit its condemnation. 

6. The promptness and vigor with which the func- 
tion of conscience is performed depends largely on the 
conscience attention paid to its deliverances, — on the 
obeyed promptness and fidelity with which its be- 

prompt in its bests are complied with. Every faculty 
function. acquires facility as well as vigor and accu- 
racy of action, in proportion to the frequency of its 
use and the freedom with which it acts. But it is 
equally a law of every faculty that facility, vigor, and 
freedom of action are promoted or hindered by the 
reactionary influence of the respect paid to its prod- 
ucts. Season is quickened in its exercise by the 
regard shown for its decisions; imagination is invig- 
orated by the pleasure taken in its creations; and 
memory becomes tenacious in its hold and prompt in 
its action in proportion to the gratification derived 
from the fulfilment of its office ; and in like manner 
conscience becomes prompt, decisive, and accurate in 
its action in proportion to the heed given to its de- 
cisions. The highest manhood has its roots in the 
strictest conscientiousness. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE ACTUAL, JUDGMENTS OF GOWSOBENGE. 

§ 41. The judgments of conscience are always defi- 
nite approvals or disapprovals of self, and never fail to 
be accompanied with emotions of pleasure 
or pain. In respect to these judgments it J^JJ^*" 
should be remembered that: 

1. They always express the conviction that we have 
either fulfilled or violated moral obligations, and are 
presumptive evidence of personal innocence 

or guilt. The emotions engendered by the evidence of 
convictions are natural results, and may be innoceilce or 

J guilt. 

regarded as part of the natural sanctions of 
moral law. 

2. Though the judgments are on occasion just as 
decisively complacential as on occasion they are dis- 
placential, yet habitual right acts, spontane- Complaeen . 
ously done, do not commonly come before tiaijudg- 

. 1P -,. ... , , . . ments but 

the mind for moral inquisition, and so elicit slightly no- 
no formal judgments ; but when from any tlced ' 
cause they become objects of inquiry and are approved, 
the sense of approval is as unmistakable as would be 
a sense of their condemnation. 

3. The claim, therefore, sometimes made, that moral 
judgments and a conscience to render them are found 

65 



66 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

only in the fallen and guilty, and can have no place 
in a perfect nature, is wholly without ground. It is 
No rational impossible to conceive a moral being capable 
b utT g if lth " °^ cnoosm g between moral ends who should 
judgments, not also be capable of approving his own 
right choices as well as of condemning his wrong ones. 
4. Nor need we be perplexed by the fewness of 
terms that in popular language are antithetic to the 
Few terms words " compunction," "remorse," "stings 
expressing of conscience," and the like. Eight doing 

self-approval. . 1 . 

has no claim to praise or reward. He who 

does his duty does no more than is rightfully expected 
of him. The infrequent use of explicit popular terms 
denoting the rewardful office of conscience in compari- 
son with the numerous terms expressive of the puni- 
tive function is therefore natural and to be expected. 

In order to a more full understanding of the moral 
self -judgments it will be necessary to consider: 

1. Their rightness and justness; 2. Their relation 
to other mental processes and products ; 3. Their su- 
preme authority, with the objections alleged against it. 

Section I. — Rightness and Justness of our Moral Self- 
l Judgments. 

§ 42. In endeavoring to determine to what extent 
self-judgments may be just and right it should be 
remembered that: 

Seif-judg- 1. They are always the exact measure of 

ments meas- one ' s apprehension of moral obligation. If 

ure of one's *- x ° 

apprenen- his apprehension be absolutely true, his 
moral obii- judgments will be absolutely and irrever- 

gations. gibly just. 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 67 

2. They may not always at the first accord with 
the natural rewards and penalties, i. e. with the neces- 
sary sequences of right and wrong doing as 
reported in one's moral nature. These nat- cordwith 
ural sequences are the law's immutable nat ^ 
sanctions, and are one and identical with the 

eternal judgments of the infinite Lawgiver. Whether 
the natural sanctions of moral law and the judgments 
of one's conscience will finally agree or not will de- 
pend entirely on the truth or error of his apprehension 
of moral law. 

3. Though from lack of enlightenment one's self- 
judgments may only proximately correspond to the 
actual sanctions of moral law, yet it is „ , J> . , 

' J . Self-judg- 

hardly possible that in civilized communi- mentsand 
ties they should be utterly at fault. There JJJ^J" 16 " 
will most commonly, if not always, be suf- wholly an- 
ficient apprehension of moral obligation to 
prevent a complete antagonism between the awards 
of conscience and the natural sanctions. Indeed, an 
act may be performed and approved by conscience 
which under other and due enlightenment conscience 
would condemn as a crime, and yet a complete antag- 
onism between the awards of conscience and the natu- 
ral sequences of the act not exist. For example, a 
mother might religiously sacrifice her child to her 
deity ; the act in itself would be criminal, and in its 
effects injurious to her moral nature ; but in so far as 
the act was from a sense of duty though mistaken, 
and had the sanction of her conscience, the natural 
injury from the act would be counteracted by the 



68 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

quickening and sustaining sense of having done her 
duty in obeying the supreme authority supposed to 
have enjoined it. 

4. If the Tightness and justness of one's self-judg- 
ments depend on the degree of his enlightenment, and 

the degree of his enlightenment on the use 

Rapidity and ° ° 

emphasis of he has made of his opportunities and his 
mentsno" powers, then no guaranty for the accuracy 
guaranty of of his judgments is to be found either in 
the rapidity or in the emphasis with which 
they are rendered, or in the readiness or hearty sin- 
cerity with which they are accepted. In the applica- 
tion of a supposed law with which one has become 
familiar, the decisions of conscience may be rendered 
with the quickness of thought, — may come with the 
emphasis of a supreme authority and be accepted with 
the profoundest reverence ; but neither promptness of 
decision, nor assurance of right, nor sincerity of pur- 
pose can be accepted as decisive evidence that we 
are really in the right. Indispensable as sincerity is to 
all right action, no amount of it can serve as a guar- 
anty that the action is not in itself wrong. Con- 
scientiousness is a chief element in the highest style 
of character, but it is only one element among others ; 
no degree of itself alone can secure to character a 
harmony of attributes. 

5. Final self-judgments cannot, however, under due 
enlightenment, fail to accord with the natural sanc- 
T ,. , „ tions of moral law. If in our acts we have 

Final self- , 

judgments knowingly obeyed the right, our final judg- 
naturaT* 11 ments will give emphasis to the naturally 
penalty. beneficent results of obedience. If we have 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 69 

ignorantly erred, a remembrance of our ignorance will 
mollify our self-judgments, but will not prevent natural 
penalty ; the justice of the penalty will be recognized 
and heightened in proportion to our consciousness of 
responsibility for the ignorance. If we have know- 
ingly disobeyed, conscience will intensify the natural 
penalty by its compunctions. The ignorantly disobe- 
dient will be beaten with few stripes ; the wilfully 
disobedient with many. 

Section II. — Relation of Self -judgments to other Mental 
Acts. 

§ 43. Self-judgments are not isolated mental acts, 
but stand related to others, some of which seif-judg- 
precede and others follow. A glance at this ^e^mentai 
relation will throw some light on the nature acts, 
and significance of the judgments themselves. 

1. Self-judgments can never vary from what the 
undivided powers of the soul have certified cannot vary 
to without reservation as moral law. Be- ceptedmorai 
hind this certification conscience has no laws, 
power to go ; and in the presence of laws thus certi- 
fied to, is absolutely compelled to pronounce judgment 
in accordance with them. 

2. The actual deliverances of conscience are always 
independent of the direct control of every other faculty 
of the soul, as well as of every impulse, independent 
appetite, or desire. The will has no power £aJ^a Ppe ~ 
whatever to dictate or to modify self-judg- desire, 
ments. Appetites and uncurbed desires may have been 
allowed to get control of the will, — may have con- 



70 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

strained it to do despite to the decisions of conscience, 
and so for a time by reaction may lessen the emphasis 
with which self-judgments are pronounced ; but appe- 
tites and desires cannot exterminate conscience nor 
utterly hush its voice. Its judgments that are over- 
ridden to-day are repeated with avenging emphasis 
to-morrow. 

3. Self -judgments, on the other hand, have no direct 
power over the will. They simply affirm obligation and 
Cannot con- duty, and thus, through the moral emotions 
troi the will, which they awaken, supply one of the re- 
straining or quickening impulses which help to give 
direction to the will, but nothing more. If obligation 
has been fulfilled, self-approval contributes towards a 
continuance of fulfilment ; if violated, self-condemna- 
tion for the wrong inflicts a judicial penalty that 
dissuades from a repetition of the wrong, but nothing 
more. The right and the might of conscience are not 
commensurate. 1 

4. The judgments of conscience above the products 
of every other power of the soul are essential to the 
Essential to ^ orniation of symmetry of character. Every 
symmetry of power of the human soul has its office, and 

every one contributes to the making up of 
the personal character. The effects of the moral judg- 
ments on the sensibilities and thus on the making up 
of the character differ widely from those of the other 
judgments, such as the scientific, the philosophical, 



1 Bishop Butler, in his second sermon on Human Nature, says of conscience, 
" Had it strength, as it has right ; had it power, as it has manifest authority, 
it would absolutely govern the world." 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 71 

the logical, and the esthetic. This difference is due, 
as we have already seen, primarily to differences in 
the qualities of the objects judged, but also, and per- 
haps chiefly, to the clearly different capacities of the 
complex nature of man. Thus man is capable of dis- 
criminating between objects of sense and of forming 
scientific judgments ; of discerning the relation of ideas 
and of principles to one another, i.e. of forming philo- 
sophical judgments; of perceiving the relations of 
formal propositions to one another, and so of exercis- 
ing the logical faculty ; of appreciating the relation of 
parts to a whole or the proportions of things, and so 
of exercising the aesthetic faculty. From each of these 
classes of discernments and discriminative judgments, 
man is capable of receiving a distinct class of emotions, 
the residuum of which form in due time what may be 
called the substratum of the personal character. An 
undue cultivation of any one susceptibility or capacity 
ends in a distorted character. A symmetrical char- 
acter is the product of a harmonious and proportionate 
cultivation of each and all of one's powers. But inas- 
much as the moral is the most fundamental part of 
man's nature, and the authority of conscience is the 
highest the soul knows, it is only by obedience to its 
authority that complete harmony in the working of 
all the powers of the soul is possible, and complete 
symmetry of character is attainable. 



conscience 



72 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 



Section III. — Supreme Authority of Conscience. 

§ 44. If conscience may sometimes err, is it always 
safe to follow its decisions ? It certainly is always safe 
to regard that authority as supreme behind 
which it is impossible to discern a higher. 
To show that there is none higher for any 
one than his own conscience, let us consider ( 1 ) what 
can be said in support of its supremacy ; and ( 2 ) what 
can be alleged against it. 

1. That one's moral self-judgments should for him- 
self be regarded as supreme in authority is evident 
from the following considerations : 

1. From the relation of conscience to the other 

regulative and directive powers of the soul, i. e. from 

the relation of self-iudgments to other iudg- 

Seenfrom , 

relation of nients. As the soul's moral judiciary, con- 
mentslio science alone of all the directive powers 
other judg- possesses the prerogative of enforcing what 
all the other powers have unitedly accepted 
as unquestionable moral obligation. Speaking figura- 
tively, if the regulative and directive powers be re- 
garded as an aristocracy among the soul's active powers, 
conscience manifestly stands at the head of all, and 
gives the final and decisive utterance when all have 
spoken. If the powers be regarded as a council in 
common, it is a council over which conscience presides, 
judging at the conclusion of deliberations strictly ac- 
cording to what all have alike accepted as moral law, 
arraigning each and every other power, the personality 
itself as a totality of powers, for any infidelity in the 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 73 

discharge of its function ; and arraigning at a bar from 
which there can be no appeal. Or to speak literally, 
moral self-judgments are always last in a series of 
precedent judgments ; and are simply applications to 
conduct and character of such tests as the preceding 
judgments have confirmed the mind in regarding as 
indubitably binding rules of life. 

If conscience thus simply enforces what the whole 
mind has accepted as law, then conscience simply 
expresses the highest authority the soul can know. 
Its decisions in given cases may be erroneous, but its 
errors invalidate the authority neither of conscience 
nor of its judgments, but only of the supposed laws 
according to which its judgments are rendered. One 
may be induced to discard a long recognized rule of 
life, and to accept a widely different one ; he may do 
this repeatedly, and the decisions of his conscience 
vary accordingly ; but whatever the changes in its 
decisions, its authority remains intact through them 
all. 

2. A second consideration is the relation of moral 
law to moral truth. A law to be regarded as impera- 
tive must also be seen to be the mandatory From reia- 
declaration of an indubitable truth. A real J^jJSSS 
moral law is only a moral truth reduced to truth, 
preceptive form. This preceptive form is, in its own 
nature, like the truth it formulates, of absolute au- 
thority. The very conception of authority as contrary 
to truth, or as superior to it, is subversive of the foun- 
dation of right and justice, and consequently of all 
obligation. Moral self -judgments, therefore, which are 



74 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

always according to one's apprehension of truth and 
law, must also always be to the individual his supreme 
authority. 

3. Conscience is the crowning faculty of man, and 
constitutes his chief distinction from the lower ani- 
As man's mals. It lifts him above the mere animal 
facuityTs m P ro P or tion as its supremacy is main- 
supreme, tained. Its decisions, if intelligent and 
complied with, secure to the individual the highest 
manhood that his enlightenment permits. Not to 
recognize the authority of its decisions as supreme is 
to introduce discord and anarchy among the soul's 
powers, overthrowing the authority of all and insuring 
in the end deformity of character, if not utter destruc- 
tion of all personal virtue. 

4. If the supreme authority of conscience be set 
aside, no other authority can be made to take its place. 
„ „ No other, nor all other powers of the mind, 

No other x 

authoritycan can enforce order among the warring ele- 
e supreme. men £ S f ^he soul. No external authority, 
whether of the parent, the state, the philosopher, the 
priest, the Bible, or experience and utility, can ever 
reach the ruling power of the soul. Without personal 
conviction of duty, which it is the sole prerogative 
of the self-judging faculty to enforce, all constraining 
power must forever remain external and ineffectual. 
Conscience alone has power to penetrate to the centre 
of the soul and establish there a throne which nothing 
can overturn. Hence the futility of all religious per- 
secutions, and of all attempts to control the inner 
convictions by force, 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 75 

5. To deny the supreme authority of conscience is to 
deny the possibility of religion and to withdraw from 
morality its essential principle. Eeligion, Religion and 
in any light in which it can be viewed, morality de- 

. n pendent on 

is the expression of a sense of obligation, its supreme 
This sense, as well as the expression of it, authorit y- 
will exist or disappear with the existence or disap- 
pearance of a recognition of the supreme authority of 
conscience. The essence of morality is in a loving, 
unbought compliance with the immutable require- 
ments of ethical truth ; and there will be compliance 
only as there is a recognition of the supreme authority 
of moral truth and of the moral judgments based on 
truth. All other inducements to compliance can serve 
but as cheap bribes ; the result can be nothing more 
than counterfeit morality. 

6. The happiness of man depends on his recognition 
of this supreme authority. Happiness, which should 
be distinguished from mere pleasure, con- 

° x . Personal 

sists in a rational self-approbation ; and the happiness 
essence of all unhappiness is in a conscious J^ 314611 * 
self-disapprobation. Perfect happiness is 

coincident with fulfilment of all known duties. 



But the self-judging faculty, whether we will or not, 
is, and to every one must ever continue to be, the 
absolute arbiter of his duty. And since as a faculty it 
cannot be exterminated, nor its voice utterly hushed, 
a recognition of its supreme authority is evidently 
indispensable to the happiness of its possessor. To 
obey it implicitly and always, is to secure to one's self 
the controlling element of happiness; but to set aside 



76 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

its authority is, from lack of anything to take its place, 
to insure an ultimate moral chaos and despair. 

§ 45. II. The rightful supremacy of conscience has 

been denied on three grounds, viz. the fallibility of 

its decisions ; abuse of its authority ; and 

Denial of its ^ 

supreme the annoyance which an assertion of its 
authority. supremacy often occasions in society, the 
state, and the church. To these objections it may be 
replied : 

1. Fallibility of one's moral self-judgments is no 
valid objection to their supreme authority over him. 
No power of the soul, however faultless in its function, 
Notinvaii- * s P er f ec t m its products. As before shown, 
dated by conscience does not provide the law of right, 

ailly * absolute or relative, but simply enforces 
what the whole mind has accepted as law. The re- 
sponsibility for error, wherever it may lie, whether in 
education, in misuse of powers and opportunities, or 
in perversity of will, or in vicious habit, does not lie 
in conscience. Itself is infallible in its action, how- 
ever erroneous may be the law according to which it 
judges ; and to the individual in whom it speaks as 
supreme among his faculties, it must ever remain his 
only authoritative guide. 

2. The doctrine of the supreme authority of con- 
science may be grossly misused, both intentionally and 

unintentionally. Intentionally when thrust 
uae* 7 miS " forward in defence of conduct which is 

prompted, not by conviction, but by self- 
interest ; unintentionally when one persists in what 
an enlightened conscience would not require. Thus 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE. 77 

in the latter case a man with limited moral knowledge 
may have stringent convictions that hold him to be- 
littling views of life. He knows that multitudes of 
others his equals, perhaps superiors, in intelligence, 
have, under a different enlightenment, conscientious 
convictions directly the reverse of his own. But 
because his own agree with his fixed moral tastes, 
assuming himself to be absolutely right, and shielding 
himself behind the sacred authority of conscience, he 
refuses attention to whatever would bring additional 
knowledge, and so a modification of convictions. Mani- 
festly it is for his prejudices rather than for his convic- 
tions that he claims the right of supremacy. And if 
on subsequent enlightenment his prejudices are over- 
thrown, his conscience will condemn him for misuse 
of its prerogative. But his misuse gives no one else a 
warrant to trample on its authority or to do despite to 
his convictions. 

3. Again, an extremely conscientious man may have 
convictions entirely at variance with the convictions of 
others with whom he is associated in society, in the 
state, or in the church ; and under plea of 
the sacred rights and the supreme author- lesomenessin 
ity of his personal convictions may make societ y> state 

•> ■ *■ J or church. 

himself offensive and extremely trouble- 
some. And so long as his convictions are not in- 
consistent with the existence of society, of the state 
or of the church, nor with the ends for which these 
exist, his scruples, so far as his personal actions are 
concerned, cannot with justice or with impunity be 
trampled on, nor the authority of his personal convic- 



78 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

tions be overridden. But society, the state, and the 
church are at liberty, and even under obligation, to 
use all due means for the enlightenment of their 
members ; and to require that individual convictions 
and conduct shall not be at variance with the ends 
for which society, state, and church severally exist. 
Just how far the state should tolerate within its juris- 
diction the dissemination of sentiments which, though 
held and propagated on the authority of conscience, 
would if prevalent overthrow the state and revolu- 
tionize society is a question not easily settled, but is 
a question which in a free Eepublic may any day 
assume proportions of vital concern. The greatest 
promise of safety, so far as the state is concerned, is 
doubtless in a recognition of the sacred and inalien- 
able right of every community to a free and unre- 
stricted discussion of all questions of moral right and 
of moral obligation. 



DIVISION II. 

MORAL LAW. 

CHAPTER I. 

ITS PLACE AND SIGNIFICANCE IN ETHICS. 

§ 46. If it is the office of Ethics to point out to 
mankind the lines of conduct which they ought to pur- 
sue, and the kinds of character they ought Need of 
to acquire, it manifestly must be a part of morallaws » 
that office to furnish some definite and authentic in- 
formation respecting the rules or laws by which con- 
duct should be regulated and characters will finally be 
measured. Without some exact knowledge of moral 
law, ethics must at best consist of merely speculative 
discussions and probable conclusions. Without such 
knowledge there can be no ethical science, and no 
coherence nor consistency of ethical principles. 

§ 47. Whatever may be the diversity of views as to 
the origin of moral laws, and whatever may be the 
disputes respecting the methods of testing their valid- 
ity, the reality of their existence, whether Their place 
they be known or unknown to man, is un- ^ nd si s n ' 

J ' cancy in 

deniable ; and it is equally beyond dispute Ethics, 
that nothing can be more fundamental in a system of 

79 



80 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

ethics than our conceptions of the origin, nature, and 
service of these laws. Their place and meaning in 
ethics is shown by four classes of facts. 

1. Every distinctive characteristic of the rational 
being implies the existence of moral law, and by im- 
impiiedby Pty m g & prompts to inquire for it. Of 
our intuitive these characteristics we have already rec- 

ideas. 

ognized two. We have seen, first, that all 
rational beings, by virtue of their rationality, neces- 
sarily possess intuitive ideas of truth, right, justice, 
obligation, and the like, — ideas which are unmeaning 
except as pointing to, and demanding a recognition of, 
authoritative declarations, from some quarter, of what 
is true and right and just and obligatory. We have 
seen, secondly, that every rational being, by necessity 
of his own nature, judges himself and his acts, and 
in so doing measures himself and his acts by some 
explicit rules or moral laws which he has been con- 
strained to recognize as having authority over him. 

2. Nothing is more apparent than that the welfare, 
and even the continued existence of both individuals 
Required for an( ^ society, depends on abstinence from 
practical some kinds of actions and on persistent con- 

morality. . . . 

tmuance m others. What kinds of action 
are malign and what beneficent in their influence may 
be learned from various sources. To forewarn against 
the malign, and to induce to a performance of the be- 
neficent, is the one special office of moral law. From 
whatever quarter the specific precepts of moral law 
may be regarded as coming, — from social custom, from 
decretive will, or from scientific induction, — their 



PLACE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF MORAL LAW. 81 

service and significance are equally apparent. With- 
out known moral laws, and compliance with them, 
neither communities nor individuals prosper, or even 
long exist. 

3. All peoples have their ideal types of character 
and of personal virtue, — types that are understood to 
manifest themselves uniformly in certain 

" Requisite to 

lines of conduct, and through these alone personal 
to be attainable. Diverse as the types may virtue - 
have been at various periods and among different peo- 
ples, they have everywhere and always proved to be 
the product of efforts at conformity to fixed rules of 
life; each type has been the exact index of a people's 
sense of obligation as prescribed by moral law. With- 
out known moral laws, and without persistent efforts 
to obey them, personal virtue has had no existence. 

4. Ethics pertains to the conduct and character not 
alone of individuals, but also of municipalities and 
nations ; to what municipalities and nations 

. Indispens- 

in themselves are, and to what in their cor- able to muni- 
porate capacities they venture to do. Na- ^jj^j^ 
tional life perpetuates itself only through righteous- 
obedience to some kinds of organic laws, 
written or unwritten ; and municipalities secure to 
themselves peace, and assure protection to life and 
property, only so long as just laws can be enforced. 
Just laws, both national and municipal, have existed 
only where there has been some degree of recognition 
of moral obligation ; and obedience to the laws has 
been sincere and prevalent, in exact proportion as 
moral laws have been known and reverently observed. 



CHAPTEE II. 

IDEA AND DEFINITION OF MORAL LAW. 

§ 48. The phrase Moral Law is used in three clearly 
distinct senses: for instance, abstractly, to express the 
Moral law, simple idea of moral requirement; generi- 

genSf'and Cal1 ^' t0 denote the Sum total of Codified 

specific. moral rules, like the ten commandments ; 
and specifically, to signify the special precepts or com- 
mands for the regulation of human conduct, — the 
three senses being more distinctively represented by 
the phrases moral law, the moral law, and moral 
laws. 

§ 49. Law as precept or command, which was the 

original conception of it, has been not unfrequently 

and popularly defined as a "rule of action." 

Moral law r r J 

popularly As command, it implies a sovereign will 
defined. prescribing action to the will of a subject. 

But law which expresses mere will may depend on 
mere might for its enforcement, whereas law which is 
to control personal will must be supported by rational 
sanctions, and moral law by rational and moral sanc- 
tions. Moral law as precept or command has accord- 
ingly more properly and not less popularly been de- 
fined as the rule of right moral action. 

Moral law, however, when defined only as a rule of 



IDEA AND DEFINITION OF MORAL LAW. 83 

action, or even as a rule of right moral action, is com- 
monly thought of as merely objective,— Morallawas 
as externally prescribed requirement, the objective 
sanctions of which are imposed from with- a s subjective 
out. But moral law exists where there is P rinci P le - 
no objective and formal statute to proclaim it ; exists 
as an invariable, subjective, and constitutive principle 
of the personal being. As subjective principle it re- 
veals its existence through natural sequences, accord- 
ing as it is complied with or violated, and through 
sequences which are necessitated by the very consti- 
tution of the moral nature of personal beings. 

A full definition of moral law, therefore, must take 
cognizance of it as both subjective principle and 
objective statute ; as statute which represents funda- 
mental and constitutive principles of moral being. 
It must be defined not only as a rule of right moral 
action, but also as that requirement or series of re- 
quirements in the moral nature of man which he 
must strictly comply with or there can be for him 
no realization of the moral and ideal perfection of his 
being. 

§ 50. The word law, as employed in physical science, 
is used metaphorically; and in its original and most 
obvious meaning denoted merely a rule ac- Meanings of 
cording to which given classes of physical ^13^1™ 
phenomena had been observed to occur. It science, 
was intended simply to express an order of sequence, 
to affirm that under given conditions given phenomena 
uniformly occur. Several other meanings have also 
been given to the word law in physical science, one 



84 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

of which may help us to a fuller and clearer under- 
standing of the true idea of moral law. Natural 
science, the borrower of the word law, returns it to 
ethics, the lender, with an enlarged and clarified 
meaning. The special meaning here referred to is 
that in which law is made to express the uniform 
action of uniform properties. 

The use of the word law to denote a necessary 

uniformity (invariability) of phenomena as the product 1 

of uniform properties of matter may be 

Lawdenot- r r J 

ing uniform abundantly illustrated and justified. Thus 
mdftnm ** ^ s sa ^ ^at ^e P ro P ert i es °f oxygen and 
properties of hydrogen are such that when these gases 
are united in given proportions and under 
due conditions, water is invariably produced, and the 
product is said to be by natural law. So also in 
explanation of atmospheric electricity we say that 
the properties of matter are such that, under given 
conditions, electrical discharges must take place; and 

1 But the term law as denoting uniformity in the action of properties is not 
to be confounded with the much debated use of the term in the sense of cause or 
of causal force. Comte, who denied to science the right of inquiry after causes 
— first cause, efficient cause, and final cause alike — smuggled all that either 
of these terms might be needed to express into his use of the word law; and 
Lewes, in his Problems of Life and Mind, Part II. ch. 10, defends the use 
of the terms law and cause as synonymous. The stock illustration of this use 
of the word law by the defenders of it, is gravitation, and for the reason, as 
given by Comte, that "the general phenomena of the universe are explained 
by it," i. e. gravitation as a law is the explanatory cause of the phenomena of 
the universe. But this use of the term law is gravely objectionable, as putting 
into it a meaning wholly foreign to it. Law may properly denote uniform 
order of occurrence, and also the invariability or uniformity of phenomena 
as the product of invariable properties both of matter and of mind ; but to 
denote by it cause, or the casual force of the properties and energies by which 
phenomena are produced, — or to speak, as too many persons do, of law as 
"acting" or " working," — is to confound that which acts with the rule or 
law according to which it acts. 



IDEA AND DEFINITION OF MOBAL LAW. 85 

speaking figuratively they are said to take place in 
obedience to natural law, i. e. atmospheric properties 
under given conditions necessarily, and by natural 
law, generate electricity. Again, such are the proper- 
ties of the cactus that it flourishes to perfection only 
in arid soils and under arid skies ; and on the other 
hand, such are the properties of the calla lily that 
it can flourish only in a soil of reeking moisture and 
fatness. Whoever would cultivate the cactus and the 
lily must furnish for them the conditions of their 
growth, — in other words, must comply with the laws 
imposed on each by the special properties of each. 
And what is true of gases and atmosphere and plants 
is equally true of animals and of man. Given proper- 
ties and attributes of each always show themselves in 
uniform results, and if perfection of being is to be 
secured to them, the requirements of the properties 
and attributes of their being must be rigidly complied 
with. 

§ 51. Now what is true of natural law in its rela- 
tion to the properties of matter is pre-eminently true 
of moral law in its relation to the properties Moral law as 
or attributes of personal being. Moral law denoting the 

requirements 

simply declares what the human attributes f personal 
imperatively require that man shall do and P r °P erties - 
become if he is to attain to the best type of manhood. 
The natures of plants and animals do not more im- 
peratively demand compliance with the conditions on 
which alone they can thrive, than does the moral 
nature of man demand compliance with the conditions 
on which alone as personal he can prosper. Personal 



86 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

attributes cry out for truth, right, justice, honor, and 
other conditions of the highest personal type, and 
moral laws simply declare and prescribe what these 
demand. 

§ 52. There are, however, clearly marked differ- 
Points of ences between the idea of law as applicable 
difference to the mechanical and chemical properties 
physical laws which reveal themselves in physical forces, 
and moral. an( j t ke idea of law as applied to the action 
of the psychical or will force of the personal being. A 
glance at two points of difference will here suffice. 

First, physical (natural) law simply declares a rule 
according to which given properties of matter invari- 
ably and necessarily reveal themselves ; moral law, on 
the other hand, merely declares a rule according to 
which the nature of personal beings makes it their 
duty always to act. In matter, law is the rule accord- 
ing to which force acts by mechanical and chemical 
necessity ; in mind or soul, law denotes the rule ac- 
cording to which, from motives derived from the 
requirements of his moral nature, a rational being 
ought always to act. Any theory of ethics, therefore, 
which conceives moral law as merely decretive, and 
representing omnipotent will rather than as declara- 
tory of indestructible properties of being, is superficial 
and far from comprehensive of the whole truth. Moral 
law cannot be exhaustively considered except as both 
constitutive property or subjective principle, and this 
principle as formulated into objective statute. 

Secondly, physical laws, which are always deter- 
mined by the immutable and self-acting properties of 



IDEA AND DEFINITION OF MOBAL LAW. 87 

matter, are absolutely independent of all human will. 
The action of one physical force, it is true, may by 
man be momentarily and partially counteracted by 
interposing another physical force, e. g. gravitation 
may be momentarily and partially counteracted by 
the projectile force which speeds the flight of a can- 
non-ball. Nature, also, by her mutually counteractive 
centripetal and centrifugal forces provides for harmo- 
nious and changeless order in the movements of the 
planets. But physical law, i. e. uniformity in the action 
of physical forces, no contrivance of man can arrest 
or evade. Neither can moral law, *. e. uniformity in 
the action of the properties of personal being, be 
arrested or evaded. But man can comply with the 
requirements of the properties of his moral nature 
or not, as he chooses. He can interfere with their 
action or he can give them full and free play. Their 
obstructed or unhindered action makes up the viola- 
tion or fulfilment of the moral laws under which man 
exists. The sequences and sanctions, whether reward- 
ful or penal, of physical laws and moral alike are 
equally invariable and inevitable. 



CHAPTEE III. 

VARIOUS KINDS OF LAWS. 

§ 53. The various kinds of laws known among men 
are distinguished by appellatives derived from a diver- 
Kinds of sity of sources ; sometimes from the phe- 
laws. nomena to which they pertain; sometimes 

from their supposed sources ; and sometimes from the 
ends they subserve. The kinds are indefinitely numer- 
ous and complicated and difficult of classification. An 
exhaustive and satisfactory classification of all known 
species is yet to be made. There have been various 
attempts at classification, but the difficulty encoun- 
tered in all has been the inevitable overlapping of 
classes with one another. It must suffice that we 
here notice only natural laws so called from the phe- 
nomena of nature to which they pertain, and civil 
laws so called from the ends which they subserve in 
conserving to us the state and the community. With 
both the natural and the civil, moral laws stand in 
intimate and inseparable relations. And yet moral 
laws differ from physical laws in that they presuppose 
their existence, and, resting on them, both interpret 
and supplement their service to man ; and they differ 
from civil laws in that they are either implicitly or 
explicitly presupposed and supplemented by the civil, 



VARIOUS KINDS OF LAWS. 89 

the two unitedly subserving the promotion of right 
conduct and right state of being on the part of both 
individuals and society, and giving, should they be 
perfectly fulfilled, a realization of ideal manhood and 
of the ideally perfect society and state. 

Thus all kinds of real and true law, natural and 
moral, are perfectly co-ordinate and harmonious, and 
the aim of all civil statutes should be to come into 
complete accord with all other real laws A11 real and 
both natural and moral. Natural laws in J ust laws are 

. . co-ordinate 

their ultimate results or sanctions are al- and harmoni- 
ways in perfect harmony with the ultimate ous " 
results of all true moral laws. All moral laws are in 
one sense only natural laws ; and nature is one in all 
her departments. The laws of matter never contra- 
vene the laws of either mind or heart. And among 
enlightened peoples the one aim of all civil legislation 
is, or should be, to bring positive enactments into 
perfect agreement with every species of natural law, 
mechanical, chemical, and moral. 

But whatever may be the relation of laws to one 
another, and whatever the point of view from which 
any species of law may be viewed, the dis- „ 

J x J Law not 

tinction between law as constituent princi- founded on 
pie and law as objective rule or formulated p^^jjf™ 
statute, should never be overlooked. A cannot en- 
statutory law of human government which 
does not represent a reality, inevitably becomes in due 
time a dead letter; and a supposed moral law not 
grounded in the real nature of man cannot fail in 
due time to be seen to be false and to be discarded. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

ORIGIN OF MORAL LAW. 

§ 54. If moral law exists primarily as constitutional 
requirement, or subjective principle, of personal being, 
and secondarily, as this requirement stated in precep- 
tive form, then in attempting to explain its origin we 
must consider it, 

First, as subjective principle. Its origin, in this 
sense of it, must have been in the origin of the typical 
Origin of idea of man. If man was created, then the 
™ ral * aw as origin of moral law, as a principle of being, 
principle. must have been in the mind of the Creator, 
and, as idea, must have existed before man's existence 
began. If man has been the product of mechanically 
evolving forces, then the primal origin of moral law 
must have been in these forces, and could have had no 
existence till man became conscious and personal. 

Secondly, moral law as objective rule merely formu- 
lates subjective principle, — puts into words of com- 
originof mand the immutable requirements of the 
^I^llfJ as moral nature of man. If man bears the 

objective 

rule. image of his Creator, i. e. embodies in his 

personality the same constituent principles of moral 
being as the Supreme Being, then moral law is, what 
it is so often said to be, a transcript of the Divine 
90 



ORIGIN OF MORAL LAW. 91 

nature, and is at the same time a picturing in words 
of the moral nature of a perfect man. 

Moral law, therefore, whether as internal principle 
or as external statute, is not a something made for an 
end. As internal principle its seat is in Not made, 
the very nature of rational being as such. but revealed - 
As external precept, it simply tells what the principle 
is and what it inexorably requires that man shall do. 
True moral law, as command, is never made, but 
merely reveals what is true, and what is as changeless 
as the eternal Mind. Its sanctions distinctly proclaim 
that every man must expect and will receive precisely 
the rewards and penalties which his own conduct, 
by natural sequence, shall bring to him. 

§ 55. There are three distinct sources and processes 
through which moral laws have become known and 
formulated. Without attempting to indi- sources of 
cate the historical order in which man has edge of W " 
availed himself of these sources and pro- moral laws, 
cesses in the past, or in which individuals may now 
avail themselves of them, we may designate the three 
as by intuition, by observation, and by supernatural 
revelation. 

It is possible that some of the simpler, the more 
elementary, and the more self-evident of moral laws 
so immediately reveal themselves in con- 

, , . , . . Intuition. 

sciousness through a single experience m 
life, that the mind may be said to know them by 
intuition, — that they may be said to be written on 
the heart, and in their own light to be read and 
applied by the conscience. 



92 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

Again other moral laws have manifestly been as- 
Observation cer tained only after careful and repeated 
and indue- noting, through successive generations, of 
the sanctions by which the laws have re- 
ported themselves to the observing, and after careful 
inductions from the results of observation. 

Again the whole body of ethical truths, purged of 
obscuring errors, has been set forth in the clearest 
Supernatural light in the moral teachings of Jesus of 
revelation. Nazareth. His teachings elicit a response 
so immediate in the moral consciousness of all to 
whom they are made known that their truthfulness 
may be said to be intuitively recognized. 

The relation to one another of these three sources 

of our knowledge of moral law should be clearly 

understood and carefully kept in mind. 

Relation of . . . 

the three Through inattention to this relation the 
sources, m- three sources have been treated as not onlv 

tuition, ohser- J 

vation,and distinct but independent. By extremists 
among defenders of the so-called intuitive 
and derivative theories of morals, the first two sources 
have been put in contrast and even in antagonism. 
The truth seems to be that neither one of the three 
sources is for us complete without the aid of the 
others. Immediate intuition apprehends extremely 
few if any explicit moral laws, except in and through 
some concrete example ; and no amount of observa- 
tion and induction or of formal declaration can con- 
vey to the mind a convincing knowledge of moral laws 
except in and through the mind's power of immediate 
or intuitive apprehension. 



CHAPTER V. 

TESTS OF MORAL LAWS. 

§ 56. Diversity in the standards of right among 
different peoples, and among individuals of the same 
race, show plainly that not all the accepted Not aii sup- 
rules of life which are regarded as moral faws < are°true 
laws can be true laws. Grave mistakes as laws, 
to duty and right have not unfrequently been made. 
Are there any decisive tests by which true moral laws 
can be distinguished from the false ? 

§ 57. This inquiry is closely related to another in- 
quiry respecting the real ground of moral obligation, 
or the supreme reason why moral law should Tests of 
be obeyed. The two inquiries, however, are ^J ground 
clearly distinct. The first asks how we may of obligation, 
know that a given formulated law is right and true, 
— that it represents reality ; the second asks why 
we should obey it, granting it to be true. An answer 
to the first does not necessarily involve an answer to 
the second, though the second cannot be answered 
without giving, or at least assuming, an answer to the 
first. No valid reason of any kind can be shown for 
obeying a law which is not believed to be grounded in 
truth and right. 

§ 58. Tests of the genuineness of a moral law may 



94 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

be derived from the same source as our knowledge 
of the law itself. Whatever makes a law known 
Known and to us puts us, to some extent, in possession 
thfsame 0111 of ^ ie evidence of its authority. Single 
source. tests, derived from single sources, may be 

exclusively relied on by advocates of special theories ; 
but it is doubtful if anything like certainty can be 
reached except through the collective evidence of 
several if not all of them. Thus, 

1. In accordance with the popular idea of the origin 
of moral laws we might suppose them to have been 
Proof of prescribed by an infinitely wise and just 
to'uidp ^ Will If such could be proved to have 
authority. been their origin, this proof would suffi- 
ciently attest their validity and authority. Whatever 
an infinitely wise and just Will prescribes must be 
right. 

2. The real authority of some moral laws may be 
intuitively discerned. 1 Their authority may be so 
intuitively nearly self-evident that when fulfilled or 
discerned. violated in some concrete act, the mind 
immediately discovers not only the law, but its author- 
ity, and assents to it. To that authority no other evi- 
dence may be needed to give additional weight. But 
the number of laws whose authority is thus discerned 
is extremely small. As compared with the countless 
moral rules in force among men they are hardly more 

i Dr. Porter (Elements of Moral Science, §52) places the test in "the reflec- 
tive intellect which cannot but find the norm or standard of duty in the natural 
capacities of man." The "ideal" or law which the reflective intellect gives, 
one can no more "shake off or lose sight of," than he can "part with his 
shadow when he stands in the open sunlight." See § 56 of The Elements. 



TESTS OF MORAL LAWS. 95 

than the planets of our system in comparison with the 
stellar universe around us. 

3. Not a few of the moral rules recognized by man- 
kind at different periods and among differ- Growths 
ent races, have been the silent and slow ^g^peri- 
and unconscious growths of custom. Pro- ence. 
tracted experience has certified their usefulness, and 
even their necessity, and so has vindicated their right 
to be observed. 1 Analyzed by philosophers into the 
elementary principles or truths which the rules em- 
bodied, they have been vindicated and established in 
undisputed authority. 

4. Certain attempts have also been made to formu- 
late an empirical test for determining the validity of all 
laws, moral and civil, both of such as are utility as a 
now in force, and of others to which it is test - 
thought some now in force should give place. The 
one test proposed is utility in promoting the highest 
good of man. Philosophers of different schools have 
joined in accepting this test; but the one difficulty 
with them all has been to determine in what the 
highest good of man shall consist; whether in indi- 

1 Greek and Latin literatures abound in recognitions of the divine authority 
of laws which had evidently been the gradual growths of custom. Thus both 
Herodotus and Plato (Gorgias) 484, 13) quote Pindar as saying : 

1/o/u.o? 6 irdvT(ov fiaaiKeiis 

dvaTtav T€ /cat a9ava.T0iv< 

Demosthenes says : nSs €<tti vonos evp-qp.a /ecu. Suipov 6eu>v. 
Sophocles (Antigone, 456-7) has the very striking lines : 

ov yap Tt vvv ye Ka^Se'?, aAV aei ttotc 
if) TavTa, KoiSeis dl&ev e| otov eipavr). 

Cicero (De Legibus, 2. 4) calls Law, ratio recta summi Jovis ; and says of it, 
orta est simul cum mente divina. 



96 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

vidual pleasure or happiness ("egoistic hedonism"); 
in personal well-being (" eudemonism ") ; or " that which 
will produce the greatest amount of happiness on the 
whole" (" universalistic hedonism"). Until it shall be 
finally settled as to what the highest good of man 
should consist in, utility can never be a decisive test 
of a moral law, though it is certain that no law, come 
from whatever source it might, could be considered 
valid which should be universally recognized as inju- 
rious to man in its results. 

5. Kant's test was, that only such laws could be 

considered true and valid as one could for himself will 

should be binding on all men. His test 

i'ant's test 

as stated by himself is : "Act so that the 
maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold 
good as a principle of universal legislation." This test 
he regards as the dictate of the "pure practical rea- 
son," and as in no sense arrived at by induction from 
experience ; and yet he is at considerable pains to jus- 
tify it by showing how disastrous would be the results 
in society if men should act from maxims which they 
could not will should be universally adopted. He 
vindicates it by arguments drawn exclusively from 
utility, i. e. from the mischief that would follow if 
men should act from maxims which they could not 
will should be universally followed. His test can be 
vindicated negatively, and that only on utilitarian 
grounds. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DESIGN OF MORAL LAW. 

In treating of the Design of Moral Law we may 
properly consider, first, what its design is, and, sec- 
ondly, how its design is fulfilled. 

§ 59. I. The design. This to be fully understood 
must be viewed in two lights, corresponding to the 
twofold idea of law as subjective requirement or con- 
stitutive principle, and as formal precept. 

First, the design of law as subjective requirement 

must have been identical with the design or final 

cause of man's existence. If we conceive Design of 

his existence to have been the realization l a ^ as sub- 
jective re- 

of a pre-existing idea in the mind of a quirement. 
Creator, then whatever the design of his creation, 
moral law was essential to it, and essential because it 
was the most fundamental of all the constitutive prin- 
ciples of his nature. To inquire, therefore, into the 
design of moral law as subjective principle is equiva- 
lent to inquiring after the final cause of the existence 
of man, especially of his particular type of existence. 
The inquiry would be irrelevant in Ethics, and belongs, 
if anywhere, to the science of Theology. If man be 
regarded as the unintended, and consequently unintel- 
ligible, product of blindly evolving physical forces, 

97 



98 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

then the question of design is unmeaning and cannot 
rationally be asked. 

Secondly, the design of moral law as formal precept. 
This design, stated comprehensively, is to make known 
Design as to man ^ ne constitutive principles of his 
formal pre- moral being, — to set distinctly before him 
the unalterable conditions on which alone 
there can be. a realization of the true type of manhood. 
And by making known these principles or conditions, 
various and most important ends are subserved. 

1. A safeguard is furnished against the fearful 
moral risk incurred through ignorance of the require- 
Guard ments of moral being, — an ignorance that 
fauitTfrom experience could remove only when the 
ignorance. knowledge would come too late to be of 
service. Without explicit commands, some of the 
most vital principles of man's moral nature would 
become known to him only through the penalties of 
violating them, and penalties from which there could 
be no escape. 

2. A second and more positive end accomplished 
by moral precepts, is personal improvement through 
induce to knowledge and practice of the right. Man 
personal im- needs not only not to err by wrong doing, 

but also to develop into maturity by right 
doing every good principle and impulse of his nature. 
A most effective agency in continuously lifting man 
upward to something higher and better is found in the 
knowledge of the uncompromising requirements of 
moral law. No better illustration of the influence 
of such knowledge can be given than in that of the 



DESIGN OF MORAL LAW. 99 

ten commandments of Moses. Without some such 
knowledge no people can abound in character of great 
excellence, or produce an example of the highest style 
of virtue. 

3. Codified moral commands, duly known and rec- 
ognized as supremely authoritative, furnish a uniform 
standard for the measurement and final Furnisha 
estimate of all human character. Honest standard for 
self -judgments by such a standard breed men tof U 
wholesome emotions ; the reactionary influ- character, 
ence on the living of just judgments on the dead is 
only one of the many illustrations of the good ends 
served by an acknowledged moral code. 

4. The requirements laid down in an established 
moral standard furnish also both the measure and the 
justification of personal rights. We have Bothameas . 
rights because we have duties to fulfil ; and ™* and a 
the nature and extent of our rights will be of personal 
determined by the nature and extent of our ri s hts - 
duties. Even if we maintain that the real ground of 
our personal rights lies in the fact that we are per- 
sonal beings, it still remains true that he who is de- 
void of all duties is equally devoid of all rights. 

§ 60. II. How the design of moral law is fulfilled. 
A moral code of commands is intended to Moral law is 
induce to compliance with the hidden de- fulflll ed. 
mands from within. It accomplishes its end by vari- 
ous and successive steps. 

1. Its word-picture of the ideally perfect By snowing 
man makes known what man is capable of, what man 
was designed to be, and is unyieldingly re- required to, 
quired to become. become. 



100 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

2. By its picturing of the ideal man and its revela- 
By contrast- tion of inexorable demands, there is kept 
mg the ideal gjj ve j n us a sense f the difference between 

and the 

actual self, the ideal self and the actual self, and also a 
sense of antagonism between uncompromising law and 
the choices of a disobedient will. 

3. The perfect moral law with which the will is 
, „ in antagonism evokes the judgments of 

Evokes the & _ J to 

judgments of conscience, with consciousness of guilt and 
conscience. o ^ & needed change of character and pur- 
pose ; and this consciousness impels to the seeking of 
any help within reach, through which the require- 
ments of law can be complied with. 

4. Inexorable commands, and our ineffectual efforts 
shows our to comply with them, make us continu- 
fromwith- P ous ty an( l increasingly aware of our need 
out. of a power higher than our own, if compli- 
ance is ever to be possible. 

5. The end of moral law as both inward principle 
and formal precept is fulfilled when one is brought to 
Leads to re- a harmony of will with the law's require- 
supernaturai men ts ', or, to be more exact, when one is 
aid. brought to an acquaintance with, and trust 
in, the archetypal and Divine Man, who alike unfolded 
the fulness of moral law in his teachings and illus- 
trated its absolute perfection and its sanctions in his 
own person and life; and who, for all who will know 
him and trust in him as Teacher and Deliverer, will 
translate objective precept back into subjective prin- 
ciple, bringing the action of will and the requirements 
of moral law into an ever-increasing accord. 



CHAPTEE VII. 



THE SANCTIONS OF MORAL LAW. 

§ 61. The results of fulfilment or violation of moral 
law are no less invariable and inevitable than are 
the results of compliance or non-compliance Moral sanc- 
with what are known as physical laws. The variable and 
results of moral actions are the law's un- inevitable, 
varying sanctions. Several statements of indubitable 
truth respecting these sanctions may be made. 

1. The real sanctions of true moral law can never 
contravene, or in any degree differ from, the Never differ 
natural sequences of actions. Eeal penal- from natural 
ties, even if conceived to be inflicted by sequences ' 
some avenging power, can never vary from natural 
sequences. 

2. So long as there is antagonism between the 
constitutive requirements of the deeper and original 
nature of man and uncurbed hereditary Active pen- 
propensities to evil, or, as there is antago- ^"thereis 2 
nism between the deeper nature and the active evil. 
impulses and spirit of the "second nature" of habit 
superinduced by evil choices, so long will there be 
active penalty in the soul of man, whatever the dura- 
tion of his existence. 

101 



102 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

3. The sanctions of moral law can in no way be 
dependent on arbitrary fiat, but must be strictly coinci- 
Sanctions ^ ent w ^ ^ e rea ^ t i es °^ being. The morally 
not arbitrary innocent cannot be morally punished, nor 
nor y a . ^ e mora lly guilty be by fiat absolved from 
penalty. The essence of moral penalty lies in self- 
conviction of ill-desert; the essence of moral reward — 
if the beneficent result of obedience can properly be 
regarded as reward — lies in the consciousness of an 
honest and an abiding purpose to hold to the true and 
to practise the right. To the enduring sanctions of 
moral law conscience adds the final and unappealable 
award. 

4. Moral sanctions cannot vary from strict justice. 
Many great natural calamities have, so far as human 

knowledge goes, no connection with moral 
deserts, though their offices while not penal 
may be morally beneficent to man. But physical suf- 
ferings are also not unfrequently seen to be the direct 
results of wrong doing; and even the innocent fre- 
quently share in the penalties of the guilty with 
whom they are closely allied, just as the guilty share 
in the benefits accruing to the innocent and obedient 
with whom they are closely allied; but in neither 
case is there any infringement of justice, since every 
member of a body, by virtue of his membership, is 
justly a participator alike in the innocence and the 
guilt, and so in the rewards and penalties, of the 
whole. 

5. The penal sanctions of moral law, falling as a 
blight on the personal being, can be removed only by 



THE SANCTIONS OF MORAL LAW. 103 

a remedial agency in which the beneficent results of 
some new law observed, 1 shall counteract and oblit- 
erate the penal consequences of other laws p ena i sanc . 
that have been broken. The effects of tions re- 
moral vices can be removed only by culti- b y remedial 
vation of the opposite virtues. The effemi- a s enc y- 
nacy produced by self-indulgence will yield only to the 
curative influence of rigid self-denial for the benefit 
of others. 

6. No remedial agency can so far obliterate the 
effects of penal sanctions as to restore one Penaisanc- 
completely to that state to which he could u^teriy 6 ^ 
have attained had he not transgressed. The obliterated, 
associations of a once vitiated imagination haunt a man 
through life. The moral scars of great vices never 
wholly disappear, whatever the degree of reform. 

1 The mischievous influence of the popular idea that Divine "forgiveness 
of sins " is a total removal of all penalties independently of the reconstructive 
influence of a personal faith which brings into loving obedience to Christ and 
to all laws of righteousness, can hardly be overestimated. The popular con- 
ception of law as something which infinite wisdom for good ends has seen fit 
to decree, — a something whose penalties the same infinite wisdom can inflict 
or remit as for good cause is seen to be fitting, is figuratively true, and serves 
well as a working conception of religion, but cannot be regarded as scientifi- 
cally exact or as exhaustively representing reality. Moral law is as unchange- 
able as the nature of God its author, and its sanctions are as irreversible as the 
law is unchangeable. The notion that law and its sanctions are dependent on 
the Divine will, and that Divine love can at will override and extinguish 
Divine justice, is an error that above any other eats into the vitals of the 
religion of him who holds it. According to Christianity God is just at the 
same time that he justifies. 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

PERPETUITY OF MORAL LAW. 

§ 62. If moral law as subjective principle has its 
ground in the moral nature of man, and if the sole 
Evidences of purpose of the objective precept be to se- 

perpetmty. cure Qn ^ Q p ar £ Q f man ^ ue recognition of 

the principle and compliance with it, then in view of 
conclusions already reached, there are certain indubit- 
able inferences respecting the perpetuity of moral law 
which may be briefly stated. 

1. As subjective requirement or principle, moral law 
As principle, must be as unchangeable as is the identity 
able as the °f rational existence. When rational life 
nature of can cease to be, moral law may cease, but 

rational _ " 

existence. not till then. Its seat is in the eternal 
and personal Eeason. 

2. As objective precept, it must also exist so long as 
practical morality and personal virtue are to be culti- 
Precept ai- vated ; and will be needed because morality 
ways needed anc [ virtue spring only from right choices 

for practical 

morality and between ends, and ends which it is the 
virtue ' one distinctive office of objective precept 

to point out. 

3. Precept will also be endlessly needed because 
finite and progressive beings, passing as they are con- 

104 



PERPETUITY OF MORAL LAW. 105 

tinually doing from the known into the unknown, 
need objective rules for their guidance. And it is 
the peculiarity of all moral law which truly Needed for 
represents the realities of moral being, that guidance of 
the more completely it is complied with, 
the farther and the more rapidly and the more ration- 
ally it enables man to advance. But no stage of prog- 
ress will ever be reached by him where his need of 
precept will be outgrown. Of his need of it, we may 
safely say, 

(a) It will always be in exact proportion to his non- 
compliance with the subjective principles of In proportion 
his moral nature. The less disposed he is tonon-com- 

pliance with 

to comply, the more does he need to listen subjective 
to the relentless demands of precepts. principle. 

(h) Unless this compliance become automatic, or 
uniformly spontaneous, there will be no Perpetually, 
escape from the need or from the presence unless obedi- 

•11 1 m 1 • enCe ^ e au tO- 

of the unsilenced command. To hesitate maticor 
or to deliberate is to hear its unmistakeable s P° ntaneous - 
voice. 

(c) If one could, however, through experience and 
training, reach that perfect state of being in p recept 
which he would always and spontaneously mi s ht cease 
comply with the subjective principle, be- bytheper- 
coming a law unto himself, his need of ex- fectman - 
ternal command might cease ; but 

(d) Human perfectibility is an imaginary state 
which no human being ever really reaches. Perfectibilit 
None needs precept more than he who com- an imaginary 
placently thinks himself to have reached a 

state of perfection. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

THE FEELING OF OBLIGATION. 

§ 63. The feeling of obligation, existing primarily 
as the vague sense of duty which always accompanies 
Origin of the tne intuitive ideas of right and justice, be- 
feeimg of comes clear and strong so soon as there is a 

lg * ' distinct perception of something that moral 
law prescribes to be done. It differs plainly from the 
emotions that accompany the judgments of conscience. 
These emotions are always the product of judgments 
either on overt acts or on distinct purposes and 
feelings that have taken the form of mental acts. 
The feeling of obligation, on the other hand, is awak- 
ened only by contemplation of proposed acts, or lines 
of action, and springs up immediately in the mind on 
its perception of what law commands us to do. 

§ 64. The feeling of obligation or conviction of duty 
never exists except in coincidence and in correlation 
Feeling of with the feeling and sense of strict right; 

anfsense of but the feelin S ° f ri S ht and the feelin g ° f 

right. duty are not identical. Eight is predicable 

only of states and of acts and their qualities ; duty 
only of persons and their relation to the right. No 
one ever feels that he ought to do what he does not 
also feel to be right. But the feeling of right does 
not always and necessarily awaken the feeling of 
106 



THE FEELING OF OBLIGATION. 107 

obligation. Many things may be right in themselves, 
and yet neither expedient nor obligatory. The feeling 
of duty is the offspring of a perceived relation to the 
right, — of a law binding us to do what in specific 
cases we perceive it to be right for us to do. 

§ 65. The exact relation subsisting between right, 
expediency, and duty is one of the intrica- RigW;> dttty> 
cies of ethics. That expediency may some- and expedi- 
times determine our acts where the relation 
of the right to us does not transform it into personal 
obligation, there can be no reasonable ground for doubt. 
But expediency can have no place in a case of plain 
duty. 

§ 66. All right acts, right conduct, and right char- 
acter consist in prompt and complete compliance with 
an enlightened sense of duty, — with an character as 
intelligent feeling of obligation. The dif- ^Meofdut 
f erence between character as the product of and by love. 
a bare, cold sense of duty, and character as the out- 
come of a sense of duty fused into a loving preference, 
is clearly marked. The possessor of the first may be 
a strictly righteous man in the philosophical sense of 
the term ; but the highest moral character, the closest 
approach to perfection of personal being of which man 
is capable, is reached only when his sense of duty is 
at one with the unbidden yearnings of his heart. 

§ 67. The means to be employed in bringing one's 
moral affections and sense of duty into unison are 
available through what are known as his Harmonizing 
motives. One's motives are seen in the d utyTnd°the 
ends which he seeks ; his motives both affections. 



108 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

reveal, and by reaction intensify, the state of his 
affections. If we would change our motives, we must 
change our affections ; and if we would change our 
affections, we must change our motives. A change in 
one is also necessarily a change in the other. But as 
no man can by act of his own will change either his 
affections or his motives, the first step towards bring- 
ing his sense of duty and his affections into unison 
will be taken when, conscious of his own helplessness, 
he shall honestly seek the interposition of a Power 
that is higher than his own. 

In the transition from a state of discord to a state 
of harmony between one's sense of duty and his affec- 
Ascending tions there will be an ascending series in 
series of the degrees of worthiness as well as of force 
in his motives. The first motive in the 
series may be a mere blind desire to escape the un- 
easiness of a sense of unfulfilled obligation, — or pos- 
sibly may be fear of threatened punishment. From 
that beginning in the transition there will be a con- 
stantly ascending grade of motives reaching, it may 
be, up to the highest considerations or ends that can 
be derived from the infinite nature of God. The kind 
and quality of one's motives always reveal the moral 
quality of his conduct as well as the worth of his 
character. 

As all morality and personal virtue depend on the 
inquiry into state of one's affections and on a right 
Induction action of the will, it is necessary that we 
of win. inquire into the nature of the will. 



DIVISION III. 

THE WILL. 

CHAPTER I. 

ITS CONNECTION WITH 0TMER ETHICAL FACTORS. 

§ 68. Both conscience and moral law, already con- 
sidered, distinctly imply the existence of a control- 
ling power in man denominated the Will, conscience 
Moral law addresses its imperatives to man ^^piy 
as volitive as well as rational. Conscience win. 
pronounces judgment on self for its use of its voli- 
tional power in complying, or in not complying, with 
the commands of law. 

A right understanding of will, therefore, as a power 
and a function of the soul, and especially of its relation 
to other faculties, is indispensable to a right a right un- 
understanding of the morality of human of^j^^. 
actions, and of virtue as a state of personal tiai in ethics, 
being. Moral law may be ever so clearly announced 
in consciousness, and its sanctions ever so emphatically 
enforced by conscience, yet without a right relation of 
will to moral law there can be no real morality and no 
true virtue ; and without some statement of the rela- 
tion of will to other personal activities, and some clear 

109 



110 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

conception of what is meant by freedom of the will, 1 
there must remain a manifest omission in a discussion 
of theoretical ethics. It might be said that all men 
are immediately conscious of a feeling of responsibility 
whenever personal duties are distinctly set before 
them; and that they have this feeling because they 
are also conscious of freedom in choosing whether 
they will obey or not, and that this being so, it is bet- 
ter to assume the whole doctrine of will than to dis- 
cuss it. The discussion of it, it is sometimes said, is 
fruitless of good if not mischievous, because meddling 
with an inscrutable subject. But physical science, per- 
petually thrusting its conclusions from the invariabil- 
ity of natural laws upon the domains of Psychology 
and Ethics, leaves us no alternative. If we are to 
have a science of human duties we must have evi- 
dence that the human will is free. It were absurd 
to talk of duties for beings who are not free to per- 
form them. It is necessary, therefore, that we inquire 
(1) What is the will? (2) What are its relations to 
the other active powers ? (3) What are the conditions 
under which will acts ? (4) What is freedom of the 
will? 

1 " I hold, with many English moralists, that it would be quite possible to 
compose a treatise on ethics which should completely ignore the free-will 
controversy. At the same time I think such a treatment would not only be 
felt to be shallow, but would omit the consideration of really important practi- 
cal questions."— Sidgwick's Method of Ethics, first edition, Bk. I. Chap. IV. 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT IS THE WILL? 

§ 69. Will, as a faculty, may be defined as the soul's 
power to determine the extent and kind of its own 
action ; as a function, it is the soul in move- 

ml i-ii -in Will defined. 

ment. The human soul is both a vital force 
and a volitional power; the vital force acting by a 
derived and an inherent, unreasoning energy, and the 
will directing and controlling the energy in accordance 
with such ends as the rational soul may set before 
itself as desirable to be attained. 

This distinction between vital, inborn force and 
will as the faculty that directs the force, should not 
be forgotten. A blind energy, and the Essent i a i 
power that determines the direction the distinction 

i n i -it- between 

energy shall take, are entirely distinct, vital force 
though they may be, and often are, con- andwlll> 
founded with one another. If the first could be shown 
to be " determined " in its action by physical force, or 
to be automatic, the argument would still fall im- 
measurably short of proving this to be the case with 
the will. A brief glance at some of the well-known 
definitions of will may help us towards a clearer con- 
ception of what the will really is. 

Jonathan Edwards says : " The faculty of the will 
is that faculty, or power, or principle of mind by 

111 



112 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

which it is capable of choosing ; an act of the will is 

the same as an act of choosing or choice." 1 But this 

„ . . „ limits the conception of will to its inci- 

Definition of x 

Jonathan dental acts ; and since, according to its own 
Edwards. statement, choice is only an act of the will, 
the " will is the power of mind by which it is capable 
of willing," — an identical proposition. 

Eeid defines will as " man's power to determine in 
Reid's things which he conceives to depend on his 

definition. determination." 2 This definition is prefer- 
able to that of Edwards, and yet is too narrow in its 
conception by restricting the function of will to a 
limited class of determinations. 

Kant says : " Everything in nature acts according 
to laws. Eational beings alone have the faculty of 
Kant's acting according to the conception of laws, 

definition. — according to principles, i. e. have a will. 
Since the deduction of actions from principle requires 
reason, the will is nothing but practical reason." 3 
Kant also says, " The will is conceived as a faculty of 
determining one's self to action, in accordance with 
the conception of laws." 4 How a power that forms 
" conceptions of laws " and " deduces action from prin- 
ciples," can be identical with that which acts or 
determines the action, is not demonstrably clear and 
cannot be made so. 

Eowland Gr. Hazard says : " Will is the power or 

i Freedom of Will, Pt. I. § 1. 

2 Active Powers, Essay 2, Chap. I., Hamilton's Ed., p. 531. 

3 Grundlegung aur Metaphysik der Sitten, 2d, Abschnitt, or Abbott's 
Translation : Theory of Ethics, p. 42. 

4 See Abbott's Translation, p. 64. 



WHAT IS THE WILL? 113 

faculty of the mind for effort." "The act of willing, 
or the act of will, is the mind's effort." 1 This defi- 
nition seems as much too narrow as are R . G . Hazard's 
those of Edwards and Eeid, though de- definition, 
cidedly preferable to theirs. It excludes all voli- 
tions as acts of will, which occur without effort, — as 
when one cries out from severe pain. The definition 
also half implies that there may be a state of mind 
so strictly quiescent that will ceases to act, instead of 
being, in one's waking moments, always in movement. 

Calderwood says : 2 " Will is a power of control over 
the other faculties and capacities of our caiderwood's 
nature by means of which we are enabled definition, 
to determine personal activity." This does not seem 
to be sufficiently exact. Will cannot control the fac- 
ulty of judging ; cannot control capacities in any defi- 
nite sense of that term; and can determine personal 
activity only in the sense of determining its extent 
and kind. 

Differ as the definitions do, all agree in regarding 
will as the determining power in human Determines 
action. We shall regard it as that control- an action and 
ling power of the soul which determines the 
kind and extent of all action, and the kind and worth 
of all character. 

1 Freedom of Mind in Willing, p. 24. 
' Handbook of Moral Philosophy, p. 165. 



CHAPTER III. 

RELATION OF WILL TO THE OTHER POWERS. 

§ 70. Will as the controlling and determining power 
of personality stands in direct relation to all other per- 
sonal powers. Its office is to control in all 
tion^f w™" those activities to which the other powers 
are ever spontaneously impelling it. 

The impulsive powers consist of three general 
classes ; the first corresponding to the bodily or the 
physical nature of man ; the second, to his mental or 
impulsive spiritual nature ; the third, to that inter- 
ThTee 8 ' mediate realm which is the product of the 

classes. physical and the spiritual in conjunction, 

and may be designated the sensitivities or the sensi- 
bilities. Under the first belong what are called the 
appetites, hunger, thirst, and the sexual instinct, 
which man shares in common with all other animals ; 
under the second belong the perceptions and the judg- 
ments, both intellectual and moral, or the functions of 
reason ; under the third belong those compound im- 
pulses, known as the desires and the affections. Of 
this latter class, the desires partake more of the phys- 
ical than of the spiritual, and consequently are more 
allied to the appetites than to the judgments ; the 
affections, on the contrary, partake more of the spir- 
114 



RELATION OF WILL TO OTHER POWERS. 115 

itual than of the physical, and consequently are more 
allied to the judgments than to the appetites ; while 
the judgments, both intellectual and moral, though 
liable to serious disturbances from the desires and 
affections, are yet so remote from the bodily senses 
and the appetites, that they may be said to be in a 
degree, yet by no means wholly, independent of them. 
The desires and affections are so very numerous in 
their objects and so diverse in the modes of manifest- 
ing themselves that they furnish a very Difficultyof 
troublesome element in all attempts at mi- minute cias- 
nute classification of the impulsive powers. 
Springing as they do, sometimes from the physical 
constitution, sometimes from mental action, sometimes 
from the coaction of both the physical and the mental, 
and always more or less affected by habits, they be- 
come in. themselves extremely complex and difficult 
of analysis, and consequently are not easily classified. 1 
The brief general classification which we have given, 
however, of the impulsive powers as a whole, while it 
makes no attempt at a classification of that indefinitely 
large variety of the so-called secondary passions, de- 
sires, and affections, which are chiefly the product of 
the twofold nature of man, yet recognizes the possi- 
bility and the fact of their existence under the general 
designation of desires and affections. 

1 For examples of minute classifications of the lower impulsive powers, — 
called "springs of action" by Jas. Martineau and "sensibilities" by Pres. 
Porter, —see Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II. Pt. II. Bk. I. Chaps. 
V. and VI., and Porter's Elements of Moral Science, Chap. II. See also Calder- 
wood's Handbook of Moral Philosophy, Pt. II. Chaps. I. and II., who classifies 
all " impulses to action " under the general divisions of " craving powers, 
giving powers, and persuading powers " ; the first including the appetites and 
the desires ; the second, the affections; the third, the judgments. 



116 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

§ 71. But whatever may "be our analysis and classi- 
fication of the impulsive powers, the office of the will 
Ke lative among them is clearly discernible. Its dis- 
function of tinctive function is to enforce the rational 
judgments on all the lower and blindly 
acting impulses of our nature, — to control the appe- 
tites, and to bring the desires and affections, so far as 
practicable, under the guidance of the moral intelli- 
gence. 

The lower impulsive powers in their initial action 

are all of them independent of the will. Will may 

, concentrate attention on objects that arouse 

Lower impul- J 

sive powers them to action, or when aroused may fix 
tiai action " attention on objects towards which they 
independent impel, and so add to the energy of their 
impulse, but nothing more. All judgments, 
whether simply rational or also moral, are both in 
their initial and in their completion as judgments, 
quite above any direct control of the will. The single 
office of will is to mediate between the judgments and 
the lower impulses, — to enforce the former on the 
latter. Eeason and conscience as supremely authori- 
tative in the soul may give judgments, but will alone 
can enforce compliance with the judgments on the 
inferior powers. 

And the control of will over these inferior powers 
is not absolute, but limited and rigidly conditioned. 
Win limited Will can neither originate, nor prevent, nor 
of theTowep ^y itself alone terminate, their action. By 
powers. fixing attention on given objects it can 

awaken slumbering appetites, desires, or affections, but 



RELATION OF WILL TO OTHER POWERS. 117 

cannot autocratically call them into exercise; and it 
can only so far control their action as by use of rea- 
son and conscience to keep them within reasonable 
bounds. It is the actual exercise of this control 
which alone entitles man to be called a rational ani- 
mal and a moral being. 

Will, it has been affirmed by certain writers, is only 
another name for the strongest desire or affection. 
And in persons of feeble self-control, it wuinotiden- 
doubtless may be identical with the strong- Jj^eS the 
est appetite, desire, or affection. But that desire, 
the will directed by reason or conscience is often 
antagonistic with appetite and all natural desire and 
affection, and triumphs over them, is plain matter of 
observation, and in most persons is also, to a greater 
or less degree, a matter of actual experience. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH WILL ACTS. 

§ 72. Acts of will may either be a continuous and 
connected series, each act naturally and necessarily 
leading to another, the whole series partaking of a 
common type, revealing a common origin, — an origin 
in a nature that does not change ; or acts of will may 
be single and independent volitions, of differing types, 
all springing from the same source, but that source an 
win always unstable and divided nature. In either case 
So^ er tlie wil1 a l wavs acts under fixed conditions 
laws. %. e. in accordance with uniform laws. Per- 

sonal beings in willing, as in every other kind of ac- 
tion, are subject to laws imposed in part by their own 
natures, and in part by the circumstances under which 
their wills act. Some of the most noticeable condi- 
tions and laws under which the will acts may be 
briefly stated. 

1. Will does not directly originate all personal ac- 
tions. Personal life, the source of all personal voli- 
wm not the tions, is itself involuntary in its origin, and 
of'aupe^ 06 manv °f i ts acts are the mere continuation 
sonai action. f an inborn bias, or the outflow of natural 
and inherited impulses. The bias and the impulses 
become acts of will only when coming distinctly into 
118 



CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH WILL ACTS. 119 

consciousness they are voluntarily accepted as one's 
own conscious choices. Acts of will may thus be 
either the mere continuate expression of inherited 
impulses, or the impulses being consciously resisted 
the will may triumph over them and itself directly 
originate action. It follows also, 

2. That no one can will to will, but that every one 
in his volitions, isolated as well as connected, must 
act spontaneously, though always in conso- 0ne cann ot 
nance with himself and his apprehension of wiU t0 wiU - 
his relations. Will can never be anything else than 
an expression of the actually existing self at the 
moment of volition. Personal being, though involun- 
tary in its origin, is yet the embodiment of volitional 
force ; and volitional acts are simply the expression of 
this force and the indices of both its degree and its 
moral quality. 

3. The will can absolutely and immediately origi- 
nate all such mental actions, and in a normal state of 
the bodily organism all such bodily actions, 

J b J > can directly 

as are dictated by strictly intellectual judg- originate 
ments ; the volitions may so immediately ^duy^buf 
follow the judgments that the two may not au moral 
seem to be simultaneous. Will can also 
immediately execute all such moral judgments as are 
in harmony with existing desires and affections ; such 
moral judgments as are opposed to existing desires 
and affections it can execute only through the aid of 
some new affection which the moral judgments may 
call into exercise. One may, for example, condemn 
himself for an undue love of gain, and be powerless 



120 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

by mere act of will to control his passion, but may 
master it by pitting against it a stronger passion, 
which his moral judgments may bring to his aid. 
The desires and affections being independent of will 
in their origin, are also in their action beyond its 
control, except in so far as it may control them in- 
directly and by the use of means. 

4. There can be no action of the will without an 
object, i, e. without some intelligible end, foreseen and 
No act of felt to be both desirable and attainable. 
fl^S* Without a feeling of want, will never acts; 

some objec- o ' ' 

tive end. it acts for the attainment of some object or 
end by which the want shall be supplied. The end 
sought is the person's motive to action. Every act of 
will thus implies a subjective motive and its correla- 
tive or objective end, — the word motive when properly 
used always denoting both a subjective purpose and 
an objective end. 

5. The end sought in volition, in other words a 
person's objective motive, derives all its power to 
Everyone move him from the person himself. If 
makes his t ^ ^ e nQ desire nor affection for an ob- 

own objec- 
tive motives, ject, and the judgments are against it as 

undesirable and wrong, it can excite no volition. An 
object may create new desires and affections, but itself 
can never become a motive to action till the new de- 
sires and affections have clothed it with motive power. 
Every one gives to his objective ends or motives all 
the power they can have over him. 

6. Thus if we would influence any one for good, we 
must set before him as motives such objects as appeal 



CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH WILL ACTS. 121 

to his affections. The affections may have been first 
aroused by the objects, because the heart in which 
they were aroused was what it was ; in turn the affec- 
tions give the objects all the power they objects 
now have over him. Subjective motives and awaken af - 

•> fections; af- 

objective ends are all alike the creations of fections give 
the self or ego that wills, and are what they their power 
are because the ego is what it is. No ex- as motives, 
planation of will can accordingly be found in the cau- 
sal power of motives whether objective or subjective. 
Nor does it suffice to say that the self or ego that 
wills is not a concrete and invisible entity, but is only 
the sum total of feelings, impulses, desires, 

° r \ No will with- 

and affections, which are awakened into life out a per- 
by the external objects that come into con- ^twuis. 
tact with the physical organism of man; 
and that the objects by controlling the impulses be- 
come objective ends or motives that determine all 
volitions. How feelings, impulses, desires, and affec- 
tions can of themselves constitute personality, or can 
be other than mere modes or states of a personal sub- 
ject, is not conceivable. To say that they are the self 
which wills would seem to be no more reasonable 
than to say that one's headache is his head, or that 
the pleasure of seeing is the eye, or that feeling wills, 
or that impulse judges. The truth is, that impulses, 
feelings, and desires are states of the personal self 
which are more or less directly under the control of 
self, and which through aid of external objects, and 
even of ideas, self can at will bring into being and 
at will bring to an end. 



CHAPTEE V. 

FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 

§ 73. By Freedom of the Will is meant the freedom 
of the personal being, or of the individual soul in the 
who deny exercise of its volitional energy. The exist- 
firmTreedom ence °^ ^ ree w ^ * s denied by a diversified 
ofwm. class of necessitarians or so-called deter- 

minists, consisting of fatalists, of extremists among 
theological predestinarians, of positivists, evolution- 
ists, and by the various schools of pantheists ; it is 
affirmed by a somewhat less diversified class called 
libertarians or self-determinists, consisting on the one 
hand of those who claim for the will an independence 
tantamount to the power of contrary choice, i. e. the 
power to choose at any given instant the exact oppo- 
site of that which is chosen ; and on the other hand, 
embracing all those who, with varying explanations of 
what the will in itself is, claim that since it is always 
and only an expression of the personal self, it must for 
that very reason be free, though its action will always 
be with absolute certainty. 

The arguments of determinists all rest on the postu- 
lates of certain anterior and predisposing causes of all 
volitions. Predestinarians, of course, reason 

Arguments 

for and from the decretive will of an omnipotent 

against. Being. Certain physiologists claim that 

" consciousness is a function of the brain/' and " that 
122 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 123 

material changes are the causes of psychical phenom- 
ena," and consequently maintain the doctrine of de- 
terminism. 1 Others again reason from the laws of 
heredity combined with educational influences ; and 
others still, from the determining influence of envi- 
ronment; but all alike agree in recognizing will as a 
mere resultant of antecedent and necessitating causes. 
The reasoning of self-determinists rests chiefly, but 
not exclusively, on the testimony of consciousness. 

In appealing to consciousness, however, in support 
of free will, careful distinction should be made between 
the two questions : What does conscious- A right use 
ness reveal as actually taking place men- of conseious- 

ness in argu- 

tally in an act of volition ? and What does ing for free- 
consciousness reveal concerning the causal dom ' 
antecedents of volition ? To the first question con- 
sciousness is competent to give a definite, and to many 
minds a satisfactory answer ; to the second, its answer 
is that it knows nothing whatever of the matter. Con- 
sciousness may give us the clearest assurance of the 
freedom of mind in the exercise of its powers, and yet 
be unable to give us the slightest clue to the method 
by which the powers act, or to the connection of their 
action with any movement in the brain or with any- 
thing else that can affect our volitions. 

There are four distinct senses in which the phrase 
freedom of the will may be, or has been, Different 
used: first, Absence of external constraint ™eedomof f 
or compulsion ; second, A state of equi- the wilL 
poise or indifference between objects ; third, A neces- 

1 See Prof. Huxley in Fortnightly Review, December, 1886. 



124 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

sary condition, an essential principle, of rational being 
as such; fourth, A harmonious working of all the 
powers of the personal being. 

Section I. — Freedom as Absence of Outward Constraint. 

§ 74. Freedom of will in the sense of independence 

of outward or physical compulsion is unmeaning, since 

the notion of a will that is physically com- 

Will cannot „ , . ,„ ,. . . „ . 

be physically pelled IS self-COntradlCtory — IS m fact in- 
constrained. consistent with the verv id ea f will. 1 Will 

can never be outwardly constrained or compelled, and 
therefore cannot properly be spoken of as free when not 
compelled. Force and restraint are totally irrelevant 
terms in speaking of will. If the external compulsion 
be supposed to come from the mechanical action of 
physical force, then it is not the will that acts but 
force, and will is only a misnomer for a special mani- 
festation of force. Mere external force may control 
bodily action ; it can never reach the will. But if no 
external force can reach the will, then to say that the 
only freedom the will can ever know is a freedom from 
"extraneous interference," is to deny that it can be 
free at all; and this is what is really intended by 
those who would limit its freedom to the sense under 
review. They are all avowedly determinists. 

1 Prof. Bain says {The Emotions and tJie Will, p. 549) : "The designation 
' liberty of choice ' has no real meaning except as denying extraneous interfer- 
ence." Mr. Huxley says, "The only sense in which the word freedom is 
intelligible to me is the absence of restraints upon doing what one likes within 
certain limits." Hobbes had long before said : " Liberty is the absence of all 
the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical 
quality of the agent." Liberty and Necessity, near the end, or p. 273, Vol. IV. 
of his Works, Molesworth's ed. 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 125 

If again compulsion be conceived to be exercised by- 
one personal will externally compelling another per- 
sonal will, either through force or fear, then Free wm not 
it is the compelling and not the compelled ^^.on-' 
will which acts; the act performed will straint. 
embody the will, not of the actor coaches, but of the 
real actor agens. But if one will cannot constrain 
the action of another will, then it is idle to talk of 
freedom of will as consisting of absence of outward 
constraint. 

And so again, if the will be supposed to be con- 
strained by an injected thought, by an outwardly 
suggested end or motive, or by some domi- Not com- 
nating personal influence, there still can be ^^el 
no external compulsion, since no thought thoughts or 
nor motive nor influence can ever sway the influence, 
will of another, until these have been so appropriated 
and assimilated by the very will of him who is swayed 
by them, that they shall become entirely his own, just 
as food can in no way minister to the vigor and action 
of the bodily organism, till the body has appropriated 
and assimilated it to itself. And it is not more 
absurd to say that the body is compelled in its action 
by the food it assimilates, and the atmosphere it 
breathes, than that the will is compelled in its action 
by its personal environments, or by the thoughts of 
others which it absorbs and assimilates. To refuse, 
therefore, to recognize freedom of will in any other 
sense than that of absence of outward interference 
is to deny that the will can in any sense be free. 



126 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

Section II. — Freedom as Equipoise or Indifference 
betiveen Objects. 

§ 75. The conception of free will as consisting in a 
state of equipoise, or indifference between objects of 
Equipoise of choice, is manifestly without ground, and 

will an un- J ° 

real state. must be set aside as nugatory. It suggests 
an unreal and an impossible state of being. 

Every form of organic life, vegetable, animal, and 
personal alike, is endowed with its own typical nature, 
Organic life i. e. stands in given relations to certain 
ti^or r6la " 0D J ec ts, and in states of dependence on 
dependent, them, such as it stands in to no other. For 
instance, plants hold special relations to earth, air, 
light, heat, moisture, different species holding different 
relations ; animals hold certain special relations to veg- 
etation, water, light, air, heat, and to other animals, 
different animals differing in their several relations; 
and man as a personal being also holds certain rela- 
tions, in common with all other animals, to objects of 
nature as well as to his fellow-beings. On mainte- 
nance of its several relations depends alike the begin- 
ning and the continuance of every species of organic 
life. 

The special relations sustained by every species of 
life determine also its mode of being — its specific 
aii life has nature; and that which determines its 
its special ° r nature is that for which it has a special 
objects. affinity — is that towards which it is in- 

herently predisposed. All this is specially true of 
personal life; whatever conditions its being is that for 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 127 

which it has affinity, — towards which it is biased; 
and is that in and by which the life is perpetuated. 
Whatever is necessary to the existence of the rational 
and moral being is that for which he has affinity ; is 
that towards which he is instinctively impelled and 
which he will consciously seek. 

And more than all it is evident that individual 
persons begin life in this world with endless varieties 
of both degree and kind of hereditary pre- Heredity in- 
disposing affinities, so that a rational being ^^astate 
in a state of equipoise between objects of of equipoise. 
thought and between objects possessed of moral quali- 
ties is neither actual nor thinkable. 



Section III. — Freedom as a Condition of Rational 
Existence. 

§ 76. The phrase freedom of will to denote an in- 
variable condition of rational existence, — an essential 
principle of the rational being as such, — is aii rational 
undoubtedly one that expresses a just mean- rattan in 
ing. "We can form no clear conception of a free will, 
rational being which does not also involve the concep- 
tion of a free being. The real existence of free will 
in this sense may be vindicated in various ways. 

1. Consciousness testifies to its reality, (a) To be 
conscious of self is to be conscious of the free exercise 
of volitional power in self-movement. With- 

L Testified to 

out such free self-movement consciousness by con- 
of self is impossible. Man alone of all ani- sciousness - 
mals gives evidence of being conscious of self ; and of 



128 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

all animals he alone gives evidence of being free in the 
sense under review. (5) Consciousness testifies that 
volition is uncaused except as it is self-determined, 
and that it is inexplicable in its origin because it is 
self-determined, *'. e. is a free movement of the soul. 
Of mental changes originated by causes other than our 
own volitions every one is frequently made conscious ; 
but of volitions from any other causes than those 
supplied by the mind's own thoughts and judgments 
consciousness discloses nothing. (c) Consciousness 
assures us also that the will, whatever the influence 
on it of the lower impulses, or of injected thought, or 
of objective motives, can, and frequently does, go be- 
hind each and all of them, and so quickens or retards, 
so strengthens or weakens, the influence of each as 
greatly to modify if not entirely to arrest it. This 
the will could not do were it not in the fullest sense 
free. 

2. We know by experience that in case an unworthy 
desire has obtained sway over us, we, i. e. our wills, 
Freedom of have the power so to direct our attention 
Ti*!ito? ht to both the desire and its violation of moral 

by experi- 
ence, law as to elicit from conscience a condem- 
natory judgment; and then, quickened by the judg- 
ment into new energy we, or our wills, have the power 
to direct attention to new objects of pursuit, by which 
we can so far circumvent the dominant desire as finally 
to control and overthrow it. Such power our wills 
could not wield if they were not in the strictest sense 
of the word free and the freest among the powers of 
the soul. 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 129 

3. The judgments of conscience in self-condemnation 
for wrong volitions most distinctly imply freedom of 
will. Self-condemnation for a necessitated T 

Implied by 

act, or for an act that we are not consciously judgments of 



free agents in performing, is impossible. 
Consciousness of moral obligation and of free will are 
but the two sides of one indivisible conviction. Take 
away the consciousness of freedom in choosing and 
we take away the possibility of self-condemnation for 
wrong choices. 

4. Moral law, addressing its mandates and its sanc- 
tions to the personal intelligence, clearly implies free- 
dom of will. If the will be not free in its i mp ii e dby 
action then moral law as expressing moral moral law - 
obligation, and as implying alternatives of conduct and 
of consequences from conduct, is unmeaning and im- 
pertinent. 

5. Moral character as a personal acquisition can be 
praiseworthy or blameworthy in the eyes of implied in 
rational beings, only as they regard the will ^ character 
bv which the character is acquired as free as P raise - 

^ x worthy or 

in its action, and the individual by whom blameworthy, 
the character is acquired as strictly a free agent. 

Thus free will in the sense of a self-determinating 
power in respect to one's own activities is An^an. 
an invariable first principle, — a sine qua able first 

• m principle of 

non, — of the rational being. To be a ra- the rational 
tional being, is to be endowed, as with an bemg- 
inalienable birthright, with the power of determining 
for one's self both the degree and the kind of his own 
action. 



130 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 



Section IV. — Freedom as Harmon]/ among the Soul's 
Powers. 

§ 77. Another and just sense in which the phrase 
freedom of will may be used, is that of a harmonious 
working of all the powers of the personal being. The 
impulses to human action, as we have already seen, are 
of two classes, the higher and the lower, — the judg- 
ments of reason and conscience and the promptings of 
appetite, desire, and affection. It is the recognized 
office of will to apply the dictates of the superior 
powers to the control and direction of the inferior, 
when the If the will can perfectly perform this f unc- 

andwheiT ^ion, ^ en ** ^ S ^ ree an( ^ ^he wn °l e person 

not free. is in a state of perfect freedom. If any 
lower impulse, or if any combination of appetites, de- 
sires, and affections be too strong for the will's control 
of them, then just so far as the will does not control 
but is controlled, it is not free ; the authority of reason 
and conscience is overthrown; the soul is in a state 
of anarchy ; the whole person is enslaved by usurping 
powers. We say powers, because though it be but a 
single appetite that usurps dominion, yet, once in con- 
trol, every lower impulse is sure to join in league with 
it. Vices are always gregarious and prolific. 

The bondage to which one is subject when under 
the dominion of the lower impulses may be looked at 

„ . . in two ways : first, as it is in itself con- 
Bondage of J 

will viewed sidered, and secondly, as it is regarded and 

m two lights. felt by Mm who ig the sub j ect o£ it The 

nature and degree of it, in itself considered, will de- 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 131 

pend in part on the nature of the usurping powers, 
and in part on the degree to which these have gained 
ascendency ; the way it will be regarded by him who 
is the subject of it will depend chiefly on the degree 
of his enlightenment. The plantation slave may have 
been in a much more degraded condition than the 
body-servant, and yet the latter by his greater en- 
lightenment may have had a much keener sense of his 
bondage. A shameless sot or sensualist may have 
sunk much lower, and yet mentally suffer much less 
from a sense of his degrading bondage, than another 
with clearer perceptions over whom appetite or low 
desire has gained but partial ascendency and holds 
but occasional sway. 

§ 78. Possibly just here some one may say that in 
the sense of the word freedom under consideration the 
will can never be free, since it must always objection 
be constrained in its action by the judg- dominated 
ments of reason and conscience. 1 But the by reason, 
objection is valid only on the assumption that the will, 
to be free, must act capriciously and not in strict ac- 
cordance with the unalterable laws of personal life. 
The truth is, an unhindered and perfectly free will is 
simply a will that can conform itself to the remorse- 
less realities of life ; in other words, free will is only 
a continuation into act of an impulse received from a 
deliberate judgment of reason or conscience. Free 
will is the rational judgments put into action. The 
judgments themselves are only the soul's assent to the 

1 Duns Scotus has been quoted as alleging this objection to the doctrine of 
freewill propounded by Thomas Aquinas, and occasionally a modern defender 
of Determinism seems disposed to avail himself of a like specious ai'gument. 



132 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

requirements of reality, or of truth and right ; and free 
will is only the rational and moral judgments pass- 
ing over, without let or hindrance, into volition. 

Eeal freedom of will, then, consists in the perfect 
Freedom accord of the will with the rightful action 
complete of all other powers of the soul, particularly 
enforces the i n the completeness of its maintenance of 
dictates of harmony between the demands of reason 

reason. " 

and the lower impulses of our nature. Its 
worst bondage consists in its subjection to the domi- 
nation of irrational appetites and desires ; its most 
perfect freedom, in following out the details of reason. 
Its freedom is absolute, when it is in perfect accord 
with all that is noblest in our nature ; when it holds 
the whole soul to what reason and conscience regard 
as laws of truth and right. 

§ 79. Thus freedom of will, in the sense of harmo- 
„ „ . nious working of all the powers of the soul 

Freedom ia o j. 

of the whole is freedom not merely of a faculty conceived 
personality. ag g^g^^g an id ea i relation to other fac- 
ulties, but is freedom of the whole personality. The 
whole soul is free, and free not merely to choose in- 
tellectually, — is not merely endowed with the formal 
freedom which inheres as an essential principle in the 
rational being as such, but is free to will efficiently, i. e. 
is free to execute in volitions just what the rational 
moral judgments declare. 

This furthermore is the highest conceivable freedom 
The highest attainable by mortals ; is in fact the only 
freedom. freedom, strictly speaking, that man does not 
in his present state naturally possess. And of this 



FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 133 

freedom all men, in so far as they are unable imme- 
diately to do that which they see to be right, are 
destitute ; they are in moral bondage. But where this 
freedom really exists, the formal freedom of the ra- 
tional intelligence, — the third sense considered by us 
in which the phrase freedom of will is used, — is coin- 
cident with real freedom of soul. He who possesses it 
is not only free in single and transient choices, but in 
his habitual, deliberate, and continuous determinations. 
He is, in the language of Delitzsch, not only wahlfrei 
but machtfrei, 1 — free, not only in choosing, but free 
in his power to do as he chooses. 

He alone, therefore, is in the highest and fullest 
sense free who conforms himself most completely to 
the conditionating laws of his own moral ~. ... . 

& The highest 

being, — to the laws grounded in the inex- freedom is 

, , , t i> i • i , coincident 

orable demands of his own moral nature. wit hthe 
Obedience and freedom always coexist ; and compietest 

. , obedience. 

other things being equal they are always 
commutual. He is the freest moral being who is most 
punctiliously obedient to all moral laws ; just as the 
freest civil community is where all just laws are most 
completely obeyed. And hence the truth of the fol- 
lowing paradoxes : the highest freedom is the complet- 
est subjection to law; the freest beings are morally 
the most necessitated to do right; perfect moral free- 
dom is identical with moral necessity ; the absolute 
freedom of an infinite, supreme will is one with the 
inexorable necessities of an infinite and consequently 
unchangeable nature. 

1 Delitzsch, System der Biblischen Psychologie, IV. § 3. 



CHAPTER VI. 

DETERMINISM. 

§ 80. Some of the arguments in support of determi- 
nism (necessitarianism) may be briefly summarized and 
replied to as follows : 

1. The more common of the arguments urged in our 

day are derived, by one process or another, from an 

underlying doctrine of materialistic monism. 

Arguments . , , 

derived pri- A very common method of argument is 
^doctrine from the premises that every man is merely 
of material- the resultant of what he brings with him 
at his birth, combined with the influences 
encountered in his education and surroundings in life. 
The whole man it is claimed, including his will, is 
simply the product of his parentage and his environ- 
ments. Another and more specific way of stating 
this general argument derived from physiological ex- 
periments 1 is, that inasmuch as very many of the 
bodily movements of man can be clearly shown to be 
mechanical and unconscious reactions against nervous 
excitations, it must be concluded that all volitional 

1 See an article by Prof. Huxley, Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1874 ; also his 
Lay Sermons ; his article in the Contemporary Review, Nov. 1874, entitled, " Mr. 
Darwin and his Critics." Compare also Dr. Carpenter's criticism of Huxley in 
Contemporary Review, Feb. 1877. See also Fortnightly Review, before referred 
to, p. 123. 

134 



DETERMINISM. 135 

acts are merely automatic movements. But to both 
these lines of argument it is sufficient to reply that 
not only can will resist hereditary bias and whatever 
comes from environment, but it can so react against 
them as quite to reverse their power, and even to 
subordinate their power to the production of charac- 
ters the opposite of what they tend to produce. And 
furthermore, not only do different persons from the 
same parents, and under precisely the same conditions, 
acquire dissimilar and even opposite characters, but 
the same person, under unvarying conditions, often 
undergoes, through the influence of ideas, complete 
change of character, thus proving that the force which 
moulds him is not inherited, and does not spring 
necessarily from his environment, but lies in the ideas 
which reason grasps, which conscience judges him by, 
and which free will puts into action and transmutes 
into character. 

2. The will, it is claimed, acting as it always must, 
according to fixed natural laws, must act necessarily. 
But natural laws are not causes : they do wui, though 
not determine action ; they simply declare ^turafiaw 
that action or volition is always uniform is also free, 
under uniform conditions. The conditions that can in 
any sense be said to determine the action of the will 
lie in the moral nature of him that wills. Let the 
nature change and the will changes. The will, though 
acting always according to fixed laws, acts according to 
the laws of the nature it expresses ; and is free solely 
because it is the free expression of the nature of the 
person willing. 



136 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

3. Again it may be said that will being always and 
only an expression of the nature of the person willing, 
wni, though is a l so on that very account always neces- 
expressing Stated. To this it may be replied that if 

one's nature, 

is not neces- will express the whole nature, — every power 
sitated. working in harmony with every other, then 

the will is not necessitated, whether its action be 
virtuous or vicious. And if from any cause the will 
be incapable of carrying into effect the decisions of 
reason and conscience, then it is not so much a doctrine 
of determinism, as it is a doctrine of moral impotency 
(moral inability), which is illustrated, — an impotency 
induced and confirmed by a series of voluntary sur- 
renders to desires that by long indulgence have usurped 
dominion over the soul. 

4. Man, it is sometimes said, is always controlled 
by the strongest motives addressed to him, and being 

so controlled he must be necessitated in his 
troiied by volitions. But motives, as we have already 
motives. seen, derive all their power to move from 
the person moved. It is the moral nature which the 
will expresses that makes the motives and not the 
motives that make the nature and determine the will. 

5. Again, it is said man is under the government of 
an omnipotent and omniscient Being whose purposes 
Man's win none can thwart; the will of man must, 
notnecessi- therefore, always be necessitated in its 
omn^oteTt action by the supreme will of an Almighty 
wilL Euler. The reasoning is founded on two 
erroneous assumptions : first, that will can be con- 
trolled by power, whereas mere power as compulsory 



DETERMINISM. 137 

force of whatever kind or degree can have no relation 
to will. Omnipotence itself cannot force will. The 
second error is in assuming that omniscience in fore- 
seeing with absolute certainty the volitions of men, 
and in providing for the control of results, must also 
compel their occurrence, i e. it assumes that certainty 
is identical with necessity. The origin of the error is 
in the prior assumption that because we can foresee 
the absolute certainty of such events only as we see to 
be mechanically necessary, so in like manner to an 
infinite mind there can be certainty of future events 
only so far as these are foreseen to be physically ne- 
cessary. But to an omniscient mind it is plain that 
certainty in the knowledge of future and contingent 
events need not rest on a foreseen necessitation, but 
on a foreknowing of precisely what the free volitions 
of men will be. Omniscience does not rest on omnipo- 
tence, nor omnipotence on omniscience, but each im- 
plies and is commensurate with the other. 1 

1 The contributions of later writers on the Determinist side of the free Will 
controversy have added very little to the support of Determinism. Biological 
and physiological facts and experiments skilfully used by Profs Bain and 
Huxley have been made to throw much light on the physical conditions and 
concomitants of human action, but they throw almost no light on the hidden 
mystery of volition. Even with the aid of the preliminary work of positivists, 
and of such writers as Hume, J. S. Mill (the first chapter of Buckle's History 
of Civilization hardly being worth mentioning), they have left the question of 
determinism just about where Hobbes left it considerably more than two cen- 
turies ago. And as to the general subject of the will, no writers for the last 
hundred and fifty years, Kant not excepted, have discussed it more acutely, if 
more comprehensively and exhaustively, than it has been discussed by Amer 
ican authors, — among the chief of whom are Jonathan Edwards and Row- 
land G. Hazard, not forgetting Whedon, and the now but little read criticisms 
of Edwards by Day, Tappan, and Bledsoe. 



DIVISION IV. 

VIETUE AND THEORIES OP VIRTUE. 

CHAPTER I. 

MORALITY, VIRTUE, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

§ 81. What moral law prescribes, and conscience 
enforces, and will performs, is in one aspect of it mo- 
rality ; in another it is virtue ; and in yet 

Morality, J ' > J 

virtue, right- another it is righteousness. A clear under- 
the aim of all standing of what is meant by each of these 
ethical pria- terms will help us to a right view of virtue, 
and perhaps aid us in arriving at a just and 
defensible theory of it. 

§ 82. Morality consists in compliance with the re- 
quirements of moral law. The quality of the morality 
Morality, will always depend on the quality of the 
virtue, right- mot j ve j n complying with the law. There 

eousness, x J ° 

defined. may be a morality in outward form, which 

in the spirit of it is immoral because the product of 
corrupt motives. Virtue is the soul's or the will's per- 
sistency of compliance, — its energy in complying with 
moral law ; it is an acquired power of habitual con- 
formity to all right and law. 1 Moral practice breeds 
virtue. The degree of one's virtue is always strictly 

1 Kant defines virtue as " the strength of the human will in the performance 
of duty." 

138 



MORALITY, VIRTUE, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. 139 

in proportion to the efficiency of his will in fulfilling 
his obligations. And the quality of his virtue, like 
that of his morality, will depend on his motives. 
Righteousness includes both morality and virtue, and 
denotes both right practice and a right state of both 
mind and heart. 

§ 83. Thus the essence of morality is in its motive ; 
the essence of virtue differs from the essence of moral- 
ity only so far as a person differs from his Essence of 
acts, and consists mainly in the strength morality, 

virtue, and 

of one s purpose or motive. The essence or righteous- 
righteousness is in a right state of the affec- ness * 
tions, and consists in actual fulfilment in person and 
deed of all requirements of moral law. As the terms 
are now commonly used morality relates rather to 
what a man does than to what he in himself is ; and 
virtue relates more to what he in himself is than to his 
outward acts ; while righteousness covers the ground 
of both morality and virtue, i. e, stands for the quality 
of both one's acts and his character. 

§ 84. Of the three terms, morality, virtue, righteous- 
ness, the last, most commonly used in a religious sense, 
belongs rather to Christian ethics than to 
philosophical ethics, and need not here be chief and 
further discussed. But virtue is the one ^, laimof 

Ethics. 

ultimate aim of all ethics. Morality is 
enjoined, not for its own sake, but because it is pro- 
ductive of virtue. One's conduct is commendable or 
condemnable partly on its own account, but mainly 
because of its reaction on his character, and because 
of its detergent or of its corruptive influence on the 



140 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

character of others. Ethics as a science insists on 
right doing simply because the doing is at once the 
test and the instrument of right being. 

Being and doing, i. e. virtue and morality, cannot, 
without violence to the first principles of ethics, be 
True moral- conceived as divorcible or even capable of 
virtu^aiways existin g a P a *"t- Whatsoever a man really 
coexist. does, that he is ; whatsoever he is, that he 

also infallibly does. Single so-called virtues may exist 
in the same person side by side with marked vices; 
but the true virtue in which all individual virtues 
unite and harmonize is always coexistent with a pure 
morality. Where true virtue is, there the constitutive 
moral requirements of the rational being have been 
complied with, and some approach has been made 
towards a realization of the typical ideal of man. 

An estimate of the worth of character, or of that 
state of personal being towards which all morality is 
Final esti- tributary, cannot of course be safely made 

aeter rests on fr0m sin g le acts nor from anv otner c ^ ata 

conduct. than long continued and carefully observed 
lines of action. But if virtue is the outcome of mo- 
rality, then a sufficiently careful observation of one's 
actions cannot leave us in doubt as to his real char- 
acter. What men in the long run do is sure to reveal 
what they are; character will disclose itself. Hence 
a true system of ethics, like the Christian religion, 
while it insists that every man shall be judged accord- 
ing to his deeds, will also insist that the judgment 
shall be of what he inwardly is, rather than of what 
he has outwardly done. 



CHAPTER II. 

THEORIES OF VIRTUE. 

§ 85. We have already seen that one's virtue is the 
product of his morality, and that the quality of both 
his morality and his virtue depends on the True virtue 
quality of his motives. To distinguish be- SomSfb? 
tween true virtue and false we must dis- its motive, 
criminate between motives : and to ascertain what 
motives will generate the purest morality and thus 
yield the highest virtue, we must inquire for motives 
behind which none better or higher can be found. 
To make these inquiries is to examine various theories 
of virtue which have had or now have currency in 
ethical philosophy. 

§ 86. A theory of virtue involves three questions : 
(1) What is the consummate quality of true virtue, i. e. 
what is it in virtue that makes it to be true Three g _ 
virtue? (2) What ought to be the con- tionsin- 

. i volved in a 

trolling purpose (motive) with any one who theory of 
would be possessor of true virtue ? ( 3 ) virtue - 
What, in the last analysis, is the final or all-inclusive 
reason which one should be able to give to himself 
why he will be controlled by the motive that will 
secure to him true virtue, — in other words, what is 
the last ground of obligation? 

141 



142 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

An answer to the first of these questions is virtually 
an answer to the second, — that of the first involves 
An answer to ^ nat of the second ; and an answer to 
either ques- either one of the three will contain by 

tion implies . 

an answer implication an answer to both the others. 
to an. Thus, if I say that the consummate quality 

of true virtue is a supreme regard for the right object, 
then manifestly a supreme regard for that right object 
ought to be my controlling motive, and this controlling 
motive (purpose) will be found in the last analysis 
to disclose the final reason why itself should control, 
— in other words, the motive or purpose will be found 
to contain in itself a ground of obligation, below or 
behind which no other can be found ; for example, if 
I say that true virtue consists in loving the supremely 
best thing, or best Being, rather than any subordi- 
nate thing or being, then my motive to action, and 
thus to virtue, would be love to this supreme object, 
and the last and all inclusive ground of obligation to 
love this supreme object would be that it is supremely 
best, and therefore entitled to be loved. Or again, if 
with Epicurus true virtue should be said to consist in 
the repose which brings happiness, then the supreme 
motive should be attainment of happiness, and the 
ground of obligation would be in the duty to be happy. 
Or yet again, if with Kant true virtue be said to 
consist in unswerving obedience to law, then regard 
for law should be the motive, and the ground of obli- 
gation would be in the unyielding demands of law. 

§ 87. If now our explanation of the connection of 
morality and virtue be correct, and our account of true 



THEOBIES OF VIRTUE. 143 

virtue be also correct, then the answer I give to the 
question why I ought to seek true virtue must depend 
on what I regard as the ultimate ground of obligation ; 
and what I regard as the ultimate ground of obligation 
must give to my actions all there is of morality in 
them, and to my character all there is of virtue in it ; 
and all that need here be said on theories of virtue 
may be brought under a discussion of theories of the 
ultimate ground of obligation, or theories of the ulti- 
mate rule of right. 

§ 88. But while inquiring for the true, ultimate 
ground of obligation it should not be forgotten that 
there may be various grades of not un- Gra( i es0 f 
worthy motives from the humblest to the motives and 

grades of 

most exalted, and that a degree of real morality and 
morality may spring from a low grade of virtue - 
motives and a corresponding species of virtue accom- 
pany it; but the higher the motives the purer the 
morality and the nearer the approach to true virtue. 1 
Could we ascertain and always draw our motives from 
the real, ultimate ground of obligation, our morality 
would always be pure, and our virtue always true 
virtue. The highest aim of ethics is to lift man up 
from the humbler and deficient grounds of obligation 
to a ground that shall give efficiency to motives drawn 

1 See page 108. — Those writers who disparage the morality of the New 
Testament as employing an inferior class of motives because it appeals to fear 
of future punishment and to hope of reward in heaven, seem strangely inca- 
pable of appreciating the real scope and spirit of Christian morality. The 
true glory of Christianity as taught in the New Testament is the almost meas- 
ureless range of its motives, ascending from the hope and fear which can 
reach the lowest degradation to which man can descend up to the purest spirit 
of disinterested love of which human beings are capable. 



144 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

from every other and lower ground, — to a ground 
behind which none higher can be conceived to exist. 

§ 89. Nor will the inquiry for the real, ultimate 
Not fruitless ground of obligation be found to be fruit- 
StETrSe less or P urel y speculative. According to 
of right. the conclusion adopted as to what consti- 
tutes the last ground of obligation will be both for 
individuals and nations the quality of their morality 
and the kind and degree of their virtue. What the 
mind intelligently and deliberately sets before itself as 
its highest motive or end, and consequently what it 
regards as its ultimate rule of right, must be at once 
the test of its morality and the gauge of its virtue. 
And what is true of individuals is conspicuously true 
of nations. National morality and national virtue take 
all their worth from prevailing conceptions of the ulti- 
mate ground of moral obligation. Stoicism and epicu- 
reanism competed for sway of the popular mind when 
Rome was at the height of her glory ; all the world 
knows which won the day, and how fatal was the 
influence of the victor on the national morality and 
the national character. The French encyclopedists 
were explicit in the avowal of what they regarded as 
the ground of obligation and the true test of virtue ; 
in the French revolution that followed from their 
teachings, their theory took form in object lessons that 
cannot be misread. And just so far as any national 
legislation looks only to immediate and selfish ends, 
regardless of right, and of the true ground of moral 
obligation, just so far, according to all teaching of his- 
tory, will it sow the seeds of national calamities. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 

§ 90. To decide as to what should be regarded as 

the ultimate ground of moral obligation is to decide 

on one of the most fundamental of ethical . 

a most fun- 
questions. The answer we give to no other damentai 

question so materially affects our whole ques 10n ' 
system of ethics as the answer we give to this. 
Whatever that answer may be, it will supply us with 
a motive in the pursuit of virtue which will subordi- 
nate to itself every other, and which will determine 
the quality of our virtue, whether it shall be true 
virtue or only a semblance and counterfeit. Any sup- 
posed ground of obligation that cannot be translated 
into a supreme motive to virtue, gives thereby most 
conclusive evidence that it is not the real ultimate 
ground. Whatever is a just ground or reason for 
obligation must also be a good and just ground or 
reason for fulfilling the obligation. The last ground 
of obligation, and the final or supreme reason for 
fulfilling the obligation, are only two different points 
of view for looking at one and the same thought. 

There may be many reasons for a duty or obligation, 
any one of which may be a motive of more or less 
weight for fulfilling the obligation ; but to suppose 

145 



146 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

that the final or conclusive motive which determines 
the distinguishing qualities of true virtue can ever 
differ from the ultimate reason for the obligation to 
be virtuous, is to suppose that true virtue has no dis- 
tinguishing quality, but may consist of a variety of 
differing and even opposite qualities. 

§ 91. To attempt a minute enumeration of the rea- 
sons for fulfilling our moral obligations would require 
us to bring considerations from many and wide fields 
of inquiry. To enumerate only a few of the principal 
reasons, would require us to sum up the results of long 
processes of previous inquiries, and inquiries that have 
The last ended with different minds in very different 
ground of conclusions. To decide on the one reason 

obligation . . 

not easily of morality and virtue which shall take up 
determined. an( j j m ^ a u ^her reasons into a harmoni- 
ous and unified whole is a still more difficult task. 
That one reason, if it can be found, must be the 
reason beyond which no higher or profounder can 
be conceived to exist, and it must be admitted to be 
what is called the last ground of moral obligation, — 
the ultimate rule of right, — the final and all-inclu- 
sive answer to the inquiry why I must fulfil my 
moral obligations. 

§ 92. Theories of virtue have at various periods 
been propounded, in which no account has been taken 
Obligation °^ obligation at all, much less of any ground 
not always f r it. Motives to virtue, however, have 

considered . . 

in theories always been implied, and these, logically 
of virtue. adjusted to other parts of the theories, have 
plainly shown what kind and ground of obligation 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 147 

would have been necessarily recognized had it been 
taken into consideration. Thus Socrates, seeking to 
resolve all that constitutes virtue into a single con- 
cept, makes it to consist of " knowledge," holding that 
no one could be virtuous who did not first know what 
virtue is, and that no one could fail to love and 
possess virtue when once understanding what it is. 
Plato added a perception of the beauty and whole - 
someness of virtue as essential, to the knowledge which 
constitutes it. Aristotle, criticising the views of both 
Socrates and Plato, insisted on " will : ' as an element of 
virtue, making virtue to consist in a prudential choice 
of the mean between excess and deficiency. But with 
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle the one inquiry was for 
the highest good of man ; and they alike agreed in 
finding it in individual pleasure; they were egoistic 
hedonists. Had the question of obligation arisen with 
them, undoubtedly they all would have resolved it 
into utility. The felt need of determining the rela- 
tion of virtue to pleasure, which they had left 
undetermined, led the way to Stoicism and Epicu- 
reanism, which finally supplanted the ethics of both 
Plato and Aristotle; and it was the recognition of 
the supremacy of duty over pleasure which gave to 
the Stoical philosophy its affinity with Christianity. 

It was not till well into the seventeenth century 
that the question of obligation and the ground of it 
was recognized as essential in a complete Obligation 
theory of virtue, and accordingly became a astt^essen- 
subject of critical inquiry. To this inquiry * ial principle 
moralists were then primarily prompted by f virtue. 



148 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

a general reaction against the authority of dogmas, 
and by a growing recognition of the truth that if 
virtue is to be cultivated, it can be cultivated only 
through the influence of motives, and of motives 
grounded in something deeper than merely decretive 
will, and deeper than the pleasurable good which 
virtue is supposed to be useful in producing. In 
subsequent theories, — and they have multiplied rap- 
idly, — the question of obligation or duty has always 
been more or less fully discussed. It is now the 
pivot on which all ethical controversies turn, and 
on the conclusions in which these controversies 
shall terminate will largely depend the moral char- 
acter of generations immediately following. 

It is of course true that an individual's ultimate 
ground of obligation in theory may not always be 
influence of n * s ies ^ u ltimate ground in practice. Early 
theory on training and habits may have unconsciously 
and on supplied motives that continue in full force 

generations. ] on g a ft er one's theory has logically sup- 
planted them. But a settled theory of obligation is 
sure in due time to affect the conduct of a people. 
No one generation can clearly and consciously adopt 
a theory of moral obligation which shall not determine 
the character of generations that follow. To discrimi- 
nate between motives, therefore, and to point out and 
emphasize the one supreme motive which should domi- 
nate all others, is to answer a supremely practical as 
well as a theoretical question. 

Within the present century, however, several dis- 
similar and even opposing schools of moralists have, 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 149 

like the Greek philosophers, subordinated the ques- 
tion of duty to that of the good. Jeremy The q ues ti n 
Bentham, at an earlier date, had discarded ofdutysub- 

. ordinated to 

the idea of duty as baseless, counting those that of the 
acts only as good and therefore right sood • 
which minister pleasure, and those as wrong which 
minister pain. With him all utilitarians of the ex- 
treme type have uniformly agreed ; those of the more 
moderate type have treated the question of duty as 
secondary and insigificant in comparison with that 
of the good. Certain writers who have claimed to 
stand at a Christian point of view, e.g. Eothe, Theo- 
logische Ethik, and Martensen, Christian Ethics, have 
also built their systems almost wholly on the idea 
of the good. 1 The same is done by the Hegelian 
moralists, F. H. Bradley, Ethical Studies, and T. H. 
Green, Prolegomena to Ethics ; and, though it may not 
be strictly true to say that Paul Janet, Theory of 
Morals, and the American authors, Presidents Hop- 
kins, Fairchild, and Porter, in their ethical text-books 
have subordinated the obligatory to the good, yet it 
must be admitted that Duty with them takes no 
precedence, but is treated as only equal to, and co- 
ordinate with, the good. 2 Professed utilitarians of 
the more moderate type, including the less moderate 
Professor Bain, have claimed to explain the idea of 
Duty as the outcome of the Hartleyan principle of the 

1 Schleiermacher, who had preceded them, had, in his Sittenlehre, from 
a more philosophical point of view built on the same basis. 

2 Dr. rorter regards obligation as a feeling " which is experienced by the 
soul within itself, without reference to any command from without," but 
"which is very often re-enforced by the authority of others." (Elements of 
Moral Science, p. 154.) 



150 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

association of ideas, — as originating in the rewards and 
penalties, the domestic, social and political experiences 
in human life, while the most accredited expounder of 
evolutional ethics, Herbert Spencer, professes not only 
to show us how the feeling of moral obligation has 
been originated, but how, in the progress of the race, 
it will at last have been outgrown. 1 

If it be said that they who base ethics on the idea 
of the highest good rather than of duty assume that 
xx- ,. . ^ whatever can be shown to be the highest 

Highest good & 

and ground good of man will naturally be his high- 
iga ion. eg £ mo ti ve to moral action, and that his 
highest good will naturally and self-evidently be 
identical with, or within itself include, the deepest or 
last ground of obligation ; it will be sufficient to reply 
that this is not self-evident ; that the truth rather is, 
that the ground of obligation includes the highest 
good, and the highest good does not include, but 
rests on, lies in, a supreme regard for the last ground 
of obligation, whatever that ground may be. That 
which one settles on as the ultimate ground of obli- 
gation must, if properly appreciated by him, become 
his supreme motive to action ; and so, if consistent 
with himself, the fulfilment of the last or supreme 
obligation will be to him his highest good. A supreme 
regard for the highest reason that I can give for doing 
right will be to me the highest good and minister to 
me the greatest happiness that I can know. 

1 Herbert Spencer says, Data of Ethics, p. 127: "The sense of duty or 
moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralization 
increases." 



THE ULTIMATE GBOUND OF OBLIGATION. 151 

§ 93. Various classifications of ethical theories have 
been adopted, and on a variety of widely differing 
principles. 1 All attempts at classification, ciassifica- 
however, meet with a common difficulty, ^ e ^° ieg 
whatever the principle on which the clas- difficult, 
sification is made. The difficulty lies in the fact that 
systems which agree in some of their fundamental 
principles are diametrically opposed in others. When 
the classification is on the principle that systems 
deriving their ethical conceptions from the same or 
similar sources shall be classed together, it sometimes 
happens that the uses made of the conceptions is so 
very dissimilar that the most hostile systems are 
brought into the same class. In classifying on the 
principle of grounds 2 of obligation, there is not unfre- 

1 One very common classification has been under the heads, Derivative and 
Intuitional, corresponding to another distribution under the designations a 
posteriori and a priori. Dr. Hickok divides into Objective theories and Sub- 
jective theories. Mr. Herbert Spencer has propounded two classifications : 
the first designating systems as theological, political, intuitional, utilitarian ; 
the second, distributing according as the theories build either on the char- 
acter or on the motive of the actor, or on the quality of acts, or on their conse- 
quences. Professor Sidgwick, in his Methods of Ethics, makes three classes, 
brought under the headings, Intuitionism, Egoistic Hedonism, and Universal- 
istic Hedonism or Utilitarianism. James Martineau, in his Types of Ethical 
Theory, divides into two general classes, styled the Unpsychological, including 
two subdivisions of Metaphysical and Physical, and the Psychological, including 
the Idiopsychological and the Heteropsychological. W. L. Courtney, in his 
Constructive Ethics, classifies under two general divisions : I. Those who give 
no explanation of obligation ; II. Those who give some explanation, satisfac- 
tory or unsatisfactory. Under the first are marshalled Materialists, Mystics, 
Quietists, Pessimists, and Pantheists ; and under the second are grouped five 
varieties, — Egoistic, Sentimentalist, Utilitarian, Rationalistic, and Naturalis- 
tic or Scientific, — a classification which the author is very far from consist- 
ently following in the body of his work. 

2 The difference between the "grounds" of moral distinctions and obliga- 
tions, and their " sources " or " origin," is too marked to be overlooked. The 
phrase " ultimate source of moral distinctions," sometimes met with, looks 
quite too much like a lack of clear thinking. 



152 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

quently an uncertainty as to where the authors of the 
systems themselves supposed the obligation specially 
to lie. Thus Shaftesbury and Hutcheson have been 
classed, and not inaccurately perhaps, as intuitional- 
ists, and they both were at the same time undoubtedly 
utilitarians ; but whether they believed obligation to 
be intuitively apprehended by the " moral sense," or 
arrived at through experience and inference, is not 
entirely clear. The same in a modified sense is true 
of Adam Smith, in his theory of " moral sentiments." 
And it is not certain whether Dr. Wayland really 
places obligation in " fitness of relations," or in the 
Divine will, and whether Dr. Archibald Alexander 
found it in the intuitive judgments of conscience or 
in the will of God. And in reading Dr. Porter's 
Elements of Moral Science, the question arises whether 
he places obligation in the demands of the " reflective 
judgment," or in the requirements of "the sensibility," 
or in the blended authority of both, or in " that ideal of 
duty " which these unitedly bring into consciousness. 
So many of the theories of the ultimate ground of 
moral obligation as need here engage our 
Four classes attention may, with sufficient degree of ac- 

of theories. J ,•-,-, 

curacy for our purpose, be brought under 
four classes, which severally find the ground of obli- 
gation as follows : 

I. In a supreme Will enforced by supreme power. 

II. In good or beneficent Ends. 

III. In principles intuited by reason, or in subjec- 
tive feelings and states. 

IV. In the immutable moral nature of an infinitely 
perfect archetypal Being. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 153 

Section I. — Theories of a Supreme Will. 

§ 94. 1. Theories which place the last ground of 
moral obligation in a supreme Will supported by 
supreme power, find the ground either (a) in the 
authority of the state, of a king, or of the Ground of 
supreme law-making power, — a theory "^reme" 1 
elaborately defended by Hobbes; 1 or (&), win. 
in the will of God, in the authority of the supreme 
Being. This last view has had numerous advocates; 
was defended in an extreme form by William of 
Occam ; 2 was held by most theologians in the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries; was specially de- 
fended by Paley 3 and Warburton ; 4 and has been 
maintained by a few authors in later years. 6 

The great objection to the theory, in either form of 
it, is its necessary implication that right and wrong 
may be changeable quantities if the supreme criticism of 
Will shall so dictate. It virtually implies «* theory, 
that might can make right. But to defend the theory 
against the charge of arbitrariness, those holding it 
have sought to show that the supreme Will enacts 
laws for the fittest and best possible ends, their views 
thus naturally running into and merging in one or 
another of the many modifications of the theory of 
moral Ends. Thus Hobbes, with whom pleasure and 

1 See his Leviathan, Part II. 

3 Nullum actum malum esse nisi quatinus a Deo prohibitum ; et qui non 
posset fieri bonus si a Deo praecipiatur. 

3 Moral and Political Philosophy. 

4 See Watson's Life of Warburton, Chap. VI. ; also quotations from War- 
burton's letters in Porter's Elements, p. 161. 

" Dymond, Essays on the Principles of Morality. Wardlaw, Christian 
Ethics. 



154 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

pain are always synonymous with good and evil, 
maintains that though right is determined by sover- 
eign will, yet affirms that this will is subject to the 
"laws of nature," and that these laws always minister 
to the common weal of man, 1 and that " of all volun- 
tary acts the object to every man is his own good." 2 
Paley, denning virtue as " the doing good to mankind, 
in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of 
everlasting happiness," apparently founds obligation in 
the Divine Will, yet by placing the motive to obedi- 
ence in everlasting happiness he makes this happiness 
to be the reason for the will, and thus the basis of the 
obligation. 

Section II. — Theories of Good Ends Subserved. 

§ 95. II. Theories which place all that they recog- 
nize of moral obligation in the G-ood Ends which 
obligation in morality and virtue subserve. Several dif- 
GoodEnds. ferent schools of morality, — schools that 
differ chiefly in their explanation of the origin of 
moral ideas and moral rules, — are properly grouped 
under this general class. With all of them, however, 
the idea of duty and obligation is subordinate, or at 
least not superior to, that of the highest good. By 
some of them, the idea of duty is professedly excluded. 3 
But the notion that the idea of duty can be wholly 
excluded from a system of ethics, — a notion on which 
a classification of theories has sometimes been pro- 

1 Leviathan, Chap. 30. 

2 Id., Chap. 15. 

s Jeremy Bentham said of the word ought, " it ought to be banished from 
the vocabulary of morals " ; also that " it is very idle to talk about duties." 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 155 

posed, — is too plainly erroneous to be worthy of 
serious consideration ; no just conception of virtue can 
be formed which does not imply a distinction between 
good and bad, or between right and wrong, — a dis- 
tinction which by necessity of thought implies a duty 
to choose one and reject the other. Even evolutional 
ethics recognizes duty, and attempts in its way to 
explain the origin of it. But differ as the several 
schools of this general class may in their accounts of 
both the nature and the origin of the sense of duty, 
all agree in recognizing some degree and kind of 
obligation, and place the ultimate ground of it in the 
results or ends that ensue from fulfilling it. The 
ends contemplated by different theories may differ 
widely, but each theory holds that in the ends it con- 
templates lies the fundamental and final reason for all 
the obligation it recognizes. 

The theories belonging under this general class 
consist of two special classes : 1. Those which make 
virtue to be a means to some further end, two special 
embracing all shades of utilitarians. 2. classe s- 
Those which make virtue to be both a means and an 
end, — a sort of compromise between utilitarianism 
and intuitionism. 

§ 96. 1. The theories which make virtue to be a 
mere means to an end, and known as utilitarian. Of 
these there are three distinct sub-classes Tnree 3Ut) . 
which may differ in their explanations of classes, mak- 

. . -, • ^ -, ^S virtue a 

the origin of moral ideas and tests of vir- means to an 
tue, but are agreed in regarding virtue as end - 
merely a means to an end. Original utilitarians, how- 



156 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

ever, held that moral ideas and moral laws are the 
results of observation, induction, and generalization. 
First, are those which, with varying shades of dif- 
ference, make the end to be pleasure or happiness 
(hedonism), represented ( a ) by writers who, like 
Hobbes, make the end to be one's own present, 
personal pleasure, or, like Paley, make the end to be 
one's own personal future happiness (both of them 
egoistic hedonists) ; or ( b ) by those writers who, like 
Jeremy Bentham, Mill, and Bain, make the end to 
be one's own happiness, with suitable regard for the 
happiness of others, — " the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number," — (egoism conjoined with altruism) ; 
(and here also doubtless, in classifying strictly on the 
principle of ground of obligation, should be placed 
both Shaftsbury x and Hutcheson, 2 who make tendency 
to "promote the public good" the test of actions, 
but who suppose the test to be supplied by an intui- 
tively judging " moral sense," rather than by experi- 
ence and induction, as professed utilitarians commonly 
do, and accordingly are usually placed, as we shall 
also place them, under another class) see p. 169 ; or 
are represented ( d ) by writers like J. Stuart Mill ( Util- 
itarianism), John Austin {Lectures on Jurisprudence), 
Professor Bain {Mental and Moral Science), and Pro- 
fessor Sidgwick {Methods of Ethics), who make quality 
rather than quantity of happiness to be the end, and, 
applying the Hartleyan principle of association, make 
the end to be the happiness not only of one's self, but 

1 Inquiry concerning Virtue, Book 2, Part 2. 

2 Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, Sect. 3, Art. 3, 1 3. Also 
Sect. 4, Art. 1. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 157 

of all men (styled " universalistic hedonism " by Pro- 
fessor Sidgwick). 

A second sub-class consists of the evolutional theories 
of ethics, which, while rejecting all shades of empiri- 
cal utilitarianism (Spencer, Data of Ethics, Evolutional 
Ch. IV., §21, §22, and Leslie Stephen, theories. 
Science of Ethics, Ch. IX.), and holding ethical princi- 
ples to have been evolved, still regard virtue as a mere 
means to an end {Data, § 58, § 59), and regard the end 
as the continuation of existence, with a " surplusage of 
happiness" {Data, Ch. VII. also Ch. IV, § 15, comp. 
Science of Ethics, Ch. IX., II.). The only difference 
between evolutional ethics and the older utilitarianism 
is in the explanations they give of the origin of the 
tests of right and wrong. According to Mr. Spencer, 
the older utilitarianism " recognizes only the principles 
of conduct reached by induction " ; evolutional ethics 
"deduces these principles from the processes of life 
as carried on under established conditions of exist- 
ence." The latter is only a more intensified utilita- 
rianism. See Data, p. 61. 

A third sub-class consists of what for want of a 
more appropriate term may be called the American 
theologico-philosophical theories of utilitari- American 
anism. The initial of these theories was in *tf tog3 ?!" , 

philosophical 
the posthumously published tractate of Jon- theories. 

athan Edwards, entitled The Nature of True Virtue. 
Edwards held that "true virtue consists most essen- 
tially in benevolence to being in general." His pupil, 
and editor of the tractate, Samuel Hopkins, main- 
tained that the benevolence should be " disinterested " 



ID 8 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

if the virtue is to be genuine. President Dwight and 
Dr. 1ST. W. Taylor, of Yale College, taught that benevo- 
lence is obligatory because it brings happiness, — Dr. 
Dwight affirming that " the value of virtue consists 
only in its efficacy to produce happiness," 1 and Dr. 
Taylor even maintaining that self-love is the spring 
of all moral action. With both Dr. Dwight and Dr. 
Taylor, as it was with Edwards, "the last end" of 
benevolence, and consequently the ground of the obli- 
gation to be benevolent, is " the happiness of the crea- 
tion," " the glory of God." Dr. Mark Hopkins, late 
President of Williams College, belonging to this same 
school of thought, finds, in his text-book on ethics, 2 
the ground of obligation in the supreme end of which 
man is capable, and that supreme end he places in 
" the happiness," or, as he prefers to call it, " the bless- 
edness of God and his rational universe." " In the 
apprehension of such an end the moral reason affirms 
obligation." 3 President Fairchild, in his Moral Phi- 
losophy, criticising the position of his fellow-moralists 
of the Edwardean school as open to the charge of 
utilitarianism, says, " Happiness is ultimate as good, 
benevolence is ultimate as obligation ";...." that is 
ultimate in the light of which the kind of happiness 
to be chosen is determined." (Ch. X.) How this office 
of benevolence differs from that of Professor Sidg- 
wick's " rational benevolence," and how the system 

1 Theology Explained and Defended, Vol. 3, Sermon 97. 

2 The law of Loce, and Looe as a law. 

3 As to the question whether the doctrines of Dr. Hopkins' treatise are 
Unitarian, see the correspondence between Dr. McCosh and Dr. Hopkins 

appended to the later editions of the treatise. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 159 

that builds on it can be said to differ essentially 
from Professor Sidgwick's " Universalis tic Hedonism " 
{Methods of Ethics, Bk. IV.), is not so apparent as it 
should be, and by no means makes it clear why Dr. 
Fairchild is not to be classed as a utilitarian. 

President Porter, in his text-book, Elements of Moral 
Science, maintains that " moral good is the voluntary 
choice of the highest natural good possible to man, as 
known to himself and by himself, and interpreted as 
the end of his existence and his activities " (p. 144). 
" The ideal of duty which man finds in his own capa- 
cities of good when viewed in the light of his reflec- 
tive judgment " (p. 146), is " the supreme end " toward 
which "voluntary activity" should be directed, "the 
quality of this activity " being tested " by the rule or 
test which man finds in his own capacities " (p. 149). 
All that the idea of duty or obligation implies, or calls 
for, it is claimed, is " fully provided for by the recogni- 
tion of that peculiarity in man's nature by which he is 
capable of being a law to himself ; i. e. in virtue of the 
voluntary and self-conscious endowments of his being " 
(p. 160). All morality, according to Dr. Porter, lies 
in " right choice " and not in the " object " chosen. 
The object to be chosen is " the highest natural good 
of which man is capable," though " the object of his 
choice is not itself morally right or wrong." That 
which man, in " the light of his reflective judgment," 
decides for himself to be the "supreme end of his 
existence," he should choose, not because of any moral 
quality in the " end " chosen, but the choice is moral, 
and is the only means by which the " end " is attain- 



160 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

able, i. e. morality is simply a means to an end. This 
certainly looks like a form of utilitarianism. 1 

§97. But to these several forms of the utilitarian 

theory there may be urged one or more, 

objections. ^^ to mogt ^ them all, of the following 

objections. 2 

1. Utility has nothing ultimate in itself, and con- 
sequently can of itself furnish no ground of obligation. 3 
utility being Utility, as the word signifies, is mere sub- 
nothing in serviency of one thing to another, — a mere 
De S the CaUn ° fitness of one thing to produce or minister 
ground of to something else. But virtue is both a 

obligation to ° 

anything definite quantity and a definite quality of 
else ' will-power which can exist apart from any 

end it may subserve, and from any pleasurable results 

1 Dr. Porter uses the phrases " moral relations," § 41, " moral distinctions," 
§ 42, " ideas of right and wrong," §48, and " moral conceptions," §67, as mean- 
ing the same thing, and speaks of them indiscriminately as "derived," as 
" constituted," as "originating," as "products," as "gained by processes," as 
" discerned," as " the creations of the individual man." According to Dr. P. 
every man, as " self-conscious and rational," " finds the norm of his activity in 
himself," p. 149. His duty is, i. e. the one ground of obligation recognized is, 
to choose according to that norm " the best end possible to his nature." 

Just what is meant by " moral relations " is not entirely clear. Dr. Porter 
calls them " products," and tells us that they are the necessary products or 
results of two conspicuous human endowments, — the reflective intellect and 
the voluntary impulses and affections," pp. 137, 138 ; and yet in another place 
he says, " moral relations are discerned by finding and applying the rule or 
measure of voluntary action, which is furnished by the nature of man when 
this activity is judged as related to the end of his existence," p. 149. The 
first of these sentences implies that "moral relations" are human creations ; 
the other that they are discovered. 

2 Of the many writers who have written more or less extensively in criticism 
of Utilitarianism, it is sufficient here to mention "An Examination of the Util- 
itarian Philosophy, by John Grote, late Prof, of Moral Philosophy in the 
University of Cambridge, 1870. Prof. W. L. Courtney, in his recent vol- 
ume, Constructive Ethics (1886) has devoted Bk. 2 of Part II. to Utilitarianism, 
but his criticism offers very little that is new. 

8 Paley says, " It is the utility of any moral rule alone which constitutes 
the obligation of it." {Moral and Political Philosophy, Book 2, Chap. 6.) 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 161 

that may flow from it. If there be any fixed obli- 
gation to be virtuous, therefore, it must be found 
elsewhere than in an end which it does not always 
subserve, or in results which do not uniformly flow 
from it. 

2. If pleasure or happiness be said to be the end 
for which virtue should be sought, and thus the basis 
of the obligation to seek it, it still cannot No basis for 
be shown that any one is under any obliga- pleasure or" 1 
tion to seek his own happiness, though all happiness. 
men do instinctively seek it. No feeling of obligation 
is needed to enforce compliance with instincts. Men 
instinctively seek food and enjoy eating ; but eating is 
not its own end. We should eat to live, and not for 
pleasure. So the instinct for happiness is not for hap- 
piness' sake, but as an inducement, or motive, to that 
in which the happiness is found. It doubtless is true 
that if virtue could be shown to be never accompanied 
with pleasure, but always with pain, one effective 
though inferior motive to virtue would be wanting, 
and there might be doubt of our obligation to be 
virtuous, but this is very far from admitting that virtue 
is merely a means to happiness as an end ; a refined 
happiness is, doubtless, one result or consequence of 
true virtue, but it is a result that comes unsought 
and unbought, and in no proper sense can be shown 
to be an explanation or basis of the obligation to be 
virtuous. 

3. The personal happiness which may flow from 
virtue cannot be the ultimate ground of obligation, 
because it can exist only as the reflex of the con- 



162 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

sciousness of having reached and rested on some 
Happiness apprehended basis of immutable obligation, 
the reflex of whatever it may be, i. e. of having done 
fulfilled obii- one's duty. The complete happiness can 
gation. j-^ on jy ^g w y 10 Yi&s the consciousness of 

resting in a loving obedience to the last and all- 
inclusive ground of obligation. 

4. The consequences of acts, pleasurable or painful, 
whether to individuals or to society, can never be the 
Consequences ultimate ground of obligation to perform 
°round of° ^he ac ^ s > because consequences are the 
obligation. mere sanctions of the moral laws which the 
acts fulfil or violate ; sanctions, so far from being 
their own end, point unmistakably to some higher and 
ultimate end for which the laws and their sanctions 
exist, and on account of which the laws should be 
obeyed, — an end which itself must, therefore, be the 
final reason, or deepest basis, for the obligation. 

5. That, furthermore, which is the last ground of 
obligation, being the highest motive to action, must 
Happiness a ^ so ^ e ^e mos ^ determinative principle of 
made the the personal character. If individual hap- 

law of obliga- . , , . „ , , , . 

tion begets pmess, even when modified by regard tor 
selfishness. the happiness of others so far as this is 
consistent with regard for one's own, be the only basis 
there is for obligation, then not only will self-interest 
be the initial motive to action, but supreme selfishness, 
which is only self-interest or personal happiness made 
the supreme motive to action, must be the most 
essential principle of true virtue. But it is a truth 
so readily seen as to be almost self-evident, that who- 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 163 

soever will save his life, i. e. his happiness, shall lose 
it, and whosoever will lose his life or his happiness 
for the sake of compliance with the requirements of 
obligation shall find it. 

6. The men to whom mankind have always felt 
themselves most indebted, and whose memories they 
have cherished most reverently, have not Disinterested 
been those who have acted for their own aiwayfeom- 
gratification, or for the pleasure of others, memorated. 
but who have been ready to lay down their lives for 
the righting of great wrongs, for the defence of human 
rights, or for the vindication of imperilled truths. 
Disinterested, self-sacrificing deeds are commemorated 
among all intelligent peoples with undying remem- 
brance. 

§ 98. 2. The second special class of theories, under 
the general class which finds obligation in beneficent 
ends, includes those writers who, while objecting to 
utilitarianism pure and simple, yet regard the sensibil- 
ities as a part of the personal being which any just 
theory of virtue must recognize and fully provide for. 
They regard it as a man's first duty to secure to him- 
self the " natural good " which his sensibilities crave, 
and in so doing not to lose sight of the 

, D _ Virtue as a 

perfection of being of which personality means and 
is capable. The determinative idea of the an end ' 
theories of this special class, in common with all the 
theories of the general class, is that of the supreme 
good rather than that of imperative obligation ; and 
the good is conceived to consist in happiness associated 
with and produced by naturul perfection. The only 



164 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

basis of obligation which these theories recognize is 
in the twofold capacity of man for happiness and 
"natural perfection." For the possession of these as 
his highest good he ought to strive. These theories 
are intended to mediate between the purely hedonistic 
on the one hand and those of unconditional obligation 
on the other. They aim to escape the gravest of the 
charges to which the extremes they would avoid are 
exposed, and yet, superior as they are to every form 
of hedonism, are open to the objection that they give 
to happiness the prominence of equality with perfec- 
tion as an end, making it in fact to be a part of natural 
perfection, rather than the accompaniment of virtue 
which comes only when unbought and unsought. 

As representatives of this special class may be men- 
tioned Paul Janet, Theory of Morals, see Bk. I., chh. 3, 
4, 7, and Bk. II., ch. 8 ; also Edith Simcox, Natural 
Law, see chh. 3, 5, 7 ; and here also, it seems to me, 
belongs Jouffroy, Introduction to Ethics, who finds the 
ground of obligation in the " moral order of the uni- 
verse," but also makes personal good and individual 
happiness essential parts of the universal order. See 
Vol. 1, Sect. 2. Translation by Wm. H. Channing. 

Section III. — Theories of Principles or of Subjective 
States. 
§ 99. III. Theories which ground obligation either 
in universal and immutable principles, truths, whose 
Obligation in supreme authority reason intuitively and 
rational prin- e j ear iy discerns, or in some form of mental 

ciples, or in •> 

mental acts action which itself speaks with a supreme 
authority in consciousness. Two special 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 165 

classes are manifestly included in this general class, 
the first resting all on principles and reason, and the 
second resting all on some special mental function. 
Theories of the first special class are sometimes called 
rationalist, because making all to turn on the intui- 
tions of reason ; and the second, esthetic, sentimental, 
or subjective, because making all to turn on feelings, 
mental states or acts. 

Some of the theories of the two special classes have 
at times been arrayed against each other, but are here 
placed under the same general class, because, Theso . cal i ed 
in the justification of themselves as theories intuitive 
they all rely, primarily, on the absolute 
trustworthiness of those immediate cognitions and feel- 
ings which are common and necessary to all minds. 
They all agree in regarding moral principles as some- 
thing which the mind, in some one of its functions, can 
immediately and clearly discern to be authoritative. 
They are all for this reason often, though inaccurately, 
represented as distinctively and exclusively intuitional 
theories ; inaccurately, because very few of them rely 
exclusively on intuitive perceptions, as furnishing an 
ultimate ground of obligation, the most of them 
bringing to their aid psychological analyses and meta- 
physical reasonings, and some of those of the second 
special class even appealing to the utility of virtue 
(see p. 156) in their support. 

There is, however, it must be admitted, an ambiguity 
common to all the theories grouped under this general 
class, as to whether the basis of authority An ambiguity 
and obligation is to be regarded as lying in in the theo " 

L * *, . & „ , . , riesofthis 

the mind s action, or m something of which general class. 



166 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

the mind's action makes us aware. Thus in respect to 
the first special class, is it in the principles, the eter- 
nal truths, that the authority lies, or in the authority 
of reason that intuits the truths ? And in respect to 
the second, is it in the soul's subjective emotions 
that obligation is discerned and rests, or in something 
which these distinctly represent or imply ? 

§ 100. 1. Under the first special class may be men- 
tioned ( a ) Cudworth, who maintained, Immutable 
obligation in Morality, Bk. 1, ch. 2, that "nothing is 
prineip^of morally good or evil by mere will, without 
reason. nature, because everything is what it is by 

nature, and not by will" ; and Bk. 4, ch. 6, that "souls 
and minds," and " those things which belong to mind 
and intellect, such as morality, ethics, politics, and 
laws," " have an independent and self-subsistent 
being " ; ( b ) Samuel Clarke, Boyle Lectures on The Unal- 
terable Obligations of Natural Religion, props. I., II., 
III., finds the basis of obligation in " eternal relations " ; 1 
an "eternal fitness of things," to which the eternal 
wisdom of God requires him to conform, and to which 
he requires all rational beings to conform, — and this 
conformity constitutes virtue ; ( c ) Eichard Price, 
Review of the Principal Questions, &c, in Morals, main- 
tained, ch. 1, sect. 3, that "right and wrong denote 
simple ideas, and are therefore to be ascribed to some 

1 Dr. Wayland, Moral Science, Bk. 1, Chap. 3, Sect. 1, apparently places 
obligation in our existing relations to God and men, of which relations we 
" become conscious by means of our intellect." These relations, however, he 
regards as " by the appointment of God," and thus would also appear to rest 
obligation in the Divine will ; in truth, he doubtless agreed with Bishop 
Butler, who made the authority of conscience supreme, regarding its impera- 
tive voice as the ultimate rule. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 167 

immediate power of perception in the human mind " ; 
and ch. 6, that the right is always immediately felt to 
be obligatory, i. e. the very idea of the right carries 
with it by necessity the idea of obligation ; (d) Kant, 
in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of 
Morals, in the first section, affirms that the only " good 
without qualification " is " a Good Will " ; and in 
sect. 2 makes the fundamental conception of Ethics to 
be Duty, founded on the absolute authority of moral 
law, which, through the " practical reason " addresses 
man, not with hypothetical and utilitarian persuasives, 
but with a " categorical imperative " ; and in the com- 
pliance with moral law, compliance solely out of 
respect for the law, i. e. for the law's own sake {Criti- 
cal Examination of the Practical Reason, Bk. 1, ch. 3) 
lies the essence of all morality and of all virtue. 
Morality is vitiated and virtue corrupted by the 
slightest regard to pleasure or happiness as a motive 
to obedience. In strict agreement with Kant, and 
Price ( e ), Frances Power Cobbe, in her Essay on Intui- 
tive Morals (ch. 4), says, " The law itself, the Eternal 
Eight for right's own sake, must be the ground of our 
obedience"; (/) Dr. Hickok {Moral Science, revised 
with the co-operation of President Seelye) says, ch. 2, 
"The ultimate rule of right is the ultimate rule of 
reason " ; "a rule self-evident and self-supporting, need- 
ing no other ground to support itself, or reveal itself, 
than itself," 

Two characteristics are common to the theories of 
this special class. First, they make right and wrong 
to be determined by ethical principles, truths, ideas, 



168 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

laws, which are simple, eternal, and incapable of analy- 
sis, and which all rational intelligence, infi- 

Characteris- . .... 

ties and nite and finite, intuitively and by necessity 

criticism. recognizes as universal and immutable ; 
and within these lies all ethical authority and the 
ultimate rule of right. Like mathematical principles 
and truths they are regarded as existing independent 
of all will, while to them an infinitely wise will is 
always conformed, and all finite wills ought to be con- 
formed. A second characteristic is the great emphasis 
laid on the intuitive power of reason. So masterly 
and decisive is this power of reason that it becomes 
an open question whether ethical principles and truths 
have any real or quantitative existence; whether in 
fact they are not pure mental creations existing only 
as ideas and having no basis of reality. The question 
is specially urgent when reading the statement of both 
Price and Dr. Hickok; and is hardly less urgent in 
reading Kant's exposition of the relation of " the cate- 
gorical imperative" and "the practical reason." 

One real if not fatal objection to these theories is 
their lack of efficient motive to virtue. Accept which- 
ever answer we may to the question above 
' raised, either that ethical principles have 
a real and substantive existence, or that reason is 
itself the law-creating power — the laws, principles, 
ideas existing only while reason holds them in hand — 
the objection seems equally valid. Something more 
than unembodied principles, — than abstract ideas on 
the one hand, and something more, on the other hand, 
than the bare intuitions of reason, however vivid and 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 169 

clear these may be, is necessary to impart energy to 
the heart of man in the mortal conflict with the insin- 
uating power of moral evil. And in saying this, no 
recognition is intended of truth in the statement of 
Wilson and Fowler, Principles of Morals, p. 51, "that 
reason never excites to action," — as if reason within 
its legitimate sphere, and with real objects as motives, 
is not the most controlling power of the soul. 

§ 101. 2. The second special class of this general 
class of theories finds the test or criterion of right 
and wrong, and thus apparently the basis Basis of obn- 
of obligation, in some one or more of the e ationin 

° _ subjective 

subjective feelings and convictions of which, feelings and 
in view of different kinds of actions, all men C0nvictl0ns - 
are more or less distinctly conscious. The ambiguity 
and uncertainty, however, before alluded to, as char- 
acteristic of all theories of the general class are specially 
observable in the theories of this special class. While 
seeming to ground duty in the subjective requirements 
of individual souls, and thus in what have been called 
intuitive apprehensions of the good and evil of dif- 
ferent actions, they all supplement the authority of 
the intuitions by an appeal, more or less direct, to the 
results of actions. Thus ( a ) Hutcheson, already re- 
ferred to under the second general class (p. 156), 
following Shaftesbury (Inquiry concerning Virtue and 
Merit), held that we are endowed with a "moral 
sense " analogous to our bodily senses, the gratification 
of which is a test of the Tightness of acts. The duty 
of mankind, therefore, is to do such acts only as 
gratify this sense, and to abstain from such as offend 



170 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

it. But Hutcheson also says, in his Inquiry into the 
Original of our Ideas of Virtue, or Moral Good, sect. 
3, p. 8, "We are led by our moral sense to judge" 
" that the virtue is as the quantity of happiness or 
natural good." The real foundation of duty is thus, 
not alone to be found in the intuitive requirements 
of the moral sense. ( b ) Adam Smith, in his Theory 
of Moral Sentiments, Pt. 1, ch. 3, placed the ultimate 
test, and thus the ultimate rule of right, in the 
sympathy which one feels assured he should have 
with his own acts and himself as actor, were he 
only an impartial spectator of himself and his acts ; 
yet he maintained, Pt. 1, ch. 3, that "the whole 
virtue of any action depends on the affection of the 
heart from which the action proceeds," and that 
" in the beneficial or hurtful effects which the affec- 
tion aims at consists the merit or the demerit of 
the action " ; ( c ) Bishop Butler, 1 in his Sermons, and 
Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue, main- 
tained that self-love and conscience are the two con- 
trolling powers in the human soul, neither of which 
is to be supplanted by the other, though in super- 
intendency and government conscience is naturally 
supreme. Ser. 2. Virtue thus consists in " following 
human nature." From the natural supremacy of 
conscience Butler says " we may form a distinct 
notion of what is meant by human nature when it is 
said that 'virtue consists in following it and vice in 
deviating from it.' " Ser. 3. He thus grounds obliga- 

1 Butler is here placed after Hutcheson and. Smith, though he preceded them 
in time, because of his far greater influence on English ethical thinking. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 171 

tion in the supreme authority of conscience, — in any 
and every conscience without regard to the training 
it has had, or to the laws or rules according to which 
it judges. True virtue is in implicitly obeying con- 
science and vice in disobeying it. And yet in the line 
followed by both Hutcheson and Smith, and to the 
great delight of all opponents of Intuitional Ethics, 
Butler adds, Ser. 11, "Though virtue or moral recti- 
tude does consist in affection to a pursuit of right and 
good as such; yet when we sit down in a cool hour, 
we can neither justify to ourselves this nor any other 
pursuit till we are convinced that it will be for our 
happiness, or at least not contrary to it." 

One objection to all these theories is their manifest 
uncertainty as to what decisively forms the foundation 
of duty. Another objection is their extreme 0b j ection 
egoism. The origin, test, end, and authority and criti- 
of moral principles are all and alike derived 
by them from man himself. Even Butler, who above 
every other moralist exalts the authority of con- 
science, claims to derive all moral principles from 
" human nature," maintaining with the Stoics that 
morality and virtue consist in " living according to 
nature." The authors of these theories all fail, Butler 
as well as the others, to furnish any uniform standard 
for the moral judgments of men, whether proceeding 
from a moral sense, from sympathy, or from conscience, 
and give no critical or satisfactory account of the fac- 
ulty, sense, or sentiment from which moral decisions 
proceed. Conscience with Butler is the conscience of 
"the plain man," but he attempts no account of the 



172 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

influence on it of education and training, nor of 
the origin of the rules or laws according to which 
it judges. 

§ 102. IV. If no final reason for the enforcement 
of moral obligation can be found either in a Supreme 
Will, or in the beneficent Ends which may be regarded 
as resulting from actions, or in the self-centred, i, e. 
the egoistic principles, whether rationalist, aesthetic, 
Ultimate or sentimental, which are supposed to be 
ground in intuitively apprehended, can it be found in 
bie nature of the immutable moral nature of the supreme 
God. personal Being who is the original and arch- 

etype of all human beings ? That it may be found 
in this changeless nature of the Supreme Being several 
considerations constrain us to believe. 1 

1. To the existence of a Supreme Being conscience 
is a direct and constant witness. No real explanation 
Testimony of of the existence and function of conscience 
theexistence can ^ e g lven ^ the existence of a Supreme 
of God. Being be denied. Its authority is inexpli- 

cable, except it be regarded as representative of a 
supreme Personality. To regard it as merely a faculty 
that forecasts and reviews the consequences of actions, 
is to confound it with prudence and to degrade its 
high offices to the low level of prudential calculations. 
To make it a mere capacity for discrimination between 
abstract principles, is to fail utterly to account for its 
judicial function or for the authority of its judgments ; 
its coercive power is wholly overlooked. The truth 

1 This theory has been more distinctly recognized and avowed by Prof. 
Calderwood in his Handbook of Moral Philosophy, " Metaphysic of Ethics," 
Ch. V. 1, than has been done by other recent writers on Ethics. 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 173 

is, its one distinctive function is that of authoritative 
self-judgments in the conscious presence of a supreme 
Personality to whom we, as persons, feel ourselves 
accountable. It is this twofold personal element, in 
every judgment of conscience, viz. the conscious self- 
judgment in the presence of the all-judging Deity, 
which has led such writers as Bain and Spencer and 
Stephen to attempt an explanation of the origin and 
authority of conscience as the product of parental 
training and social environment. 

2. Conscience, in certifying to the existence of a 
Divine Being, testifies also, distinctly, re- Witnesses t0 
specting his moral nature. It is not alone the moral 
in view of a Supreme Person, but also of a God. 
supreme kind of person, that conscience approves or 
condemns. The emotion of fear, awakened by a con- 
sciousness of offence against an omnipotent will, is 
a very different emotion from the remorse awakened 
by consciousness of antagonism with an infinitely 
pure will. In view of a malignant, or of an arbitrary 
Supreme Will, there might be a sense of relief in 
escaping his wrath, but no consciousness of a right- 
eous approval; and in incurring his displeasure there 
might be fear, but there could be no remorse. Ee- 
morse is the reproach we heap on ourselves when 
made aware of the antagonism which our wrong-doing 
creates between the nature of our supreme Being and 
ourselves. The source of all our compunction is in 
the moral nature, and not in the supreme power of 
our Deity. 

3. Morality pertains largely — some have said ex- 



174 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

clusively — to the relation of man to man. All men 
rest under certain obligations to their fellow-men, and 
to ascertain and to fulfil these obligations forms a very 

large proportion of all human duties. Why 
human obii- these obligations are obligations, and what 
rived-from the all-inclusive reason and motive is why 
the nature of they should be fulfilled, are questions to 

which no satisfactory answer can be given 
short of that found in the eternal nature of Him who 
is "Father of the spirits of all flesh." To these ques- 
tions Utilitarianism has in vain attempted so to adjust 
itself as to make rational answer; and Evolutionary 
Ethics has felt itself under special bonds to make 
answer, and hence its elaborate discussions of altru- 
ism. The only theory making answer by direct prac- 
tical illustration is that which sees the source of all 
morality and the fundamental reason for being moral 
in the moral nature of the Eternal one. The thought 
that the blind forces of nature have goaded into the 
making of all our moral distinctions, prompts no one 
to sacrifice himself for the good of others. And if the 
promotion of happiness be the test of duty and end of 
life, then acts aimed at something better than happi- 
ness, viz. the doing right, even at the expense of mi- 
happiness, are unprovided for. The truth is, men have 
duties to one another because partakers of a common 
nature derived from the archetypal and changeless 
nature of the One Original and Father of all. 

4. The sequences of personal action are both natural 
and uniform, i. e. they follow of themselves and invari- 
ably from the joint action of all the forces that make 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 175 

up personality. Just as the same physical effects 
always follow from the same physical causes, so the 
same moral effects always follow from the same moral 
causes. The invariability of effects in both cases is due 
to the constitution and constancy of the The nature 
natures they represent. The nature of man of God de - 
being what it is, the moral results of his moral results 
actions can by no possibility be other than of actlons - 
they are. The results are what they are because of the 
laws of his moral nature, the laws being constitutive 
of his nature. As physical laws, chemical and mechan- 
ical, with their attendant phenomena, are everywhere 
the same through universal nature, and are the same 
because they have their source and seat in matter as 
such, so moral laws are for moral beings everywhere 
the same because they have their source and seat in 
the nature of moral beings as such, and their primal 
source in the eternal and therefore changeless nature 
of the archetypal Being whose image all finite beings 
bear. 

5. The rewards of virtue are not directly bestowed, 
nor are the penalties of vice directly inflicted, but both 
follow naturally from the action and reac- Determineg 
tion between the infinitely perfect moral rewards and 
nature of God and the moral natures and 
dispositions of men. They whose moral states, tastes, 
and conduct are in harmony with the Supreme Being 
find in the consciousness of that harmony the most 
distinctive of the rewards of their virtue ; and they 
whose moral states, tastes, and conduct are in antago- 
nism with the Supreme One, find in that antagonism 



176 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

the most distinctive element of their punishment. 
And what is thus the real source of rewards and pen- 
alties cannot be different from the ultimate ground of 
obligation. 

6. Whatever one may regard as the final reason for 
moral obligation will, of course, be his test or standard 
As standard of right, and his moral character will neces- 
determines sarily be the reflex of his standard. If we 
character. know what is practically his test of right, 
we may know for certainty what his character either 
is or must become. And if we believe man's highest 
aim should be to realize in his own person the high- 
est type of manhood, and at the same time remem- 
ber how certain and decisive is the influence of one's 
standard on his character, — how prone every one is to 
copy the defects if there are any in his standard, — it 
is incredible that there should be any other just stand- 
ard of right than that of a perfect being, — than that, 
in short, of a Being of an infinitely perfect nature. 

7. The connection of character with motive shows 
us where the final reason or ground for right should be 

looked for. Our highest motive for obedi- 

As highest ° . . 

motive it de- ence to the right must manifestly be lden- 
termines ^- j ^ w ^ a ^ we re gard as the ultimate 

character. ° 

reason for obligation ; and our characters 
are sure to be what our ultimate reason and motive 
shall make them. And here again, as in the preced- 
ing thought, if it be true that our highest aim in life 
should be the realization in ourselves of the highest 
ideal manhood, and if the highest ideal manhood con- 
sists in a resemblance to the perfect archetype of all 



THE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. Ill 

personal being, then our ultimate ground of obligation 
should be looked for in the moral nature of the origi- 
nal and archetypal being, God. 

8. The real ground of obligation cannot differ from 
the real source of moral law. It is impossible to con- 
ceive how law can have one source, and its 

Source of 

authority another. Even if we suppose law a ground 
moral laws to consist of arbitrary prescrip- of ' 
tions for definite ends, no authority can be conceived 
to exist in the goodness of the ends that did not pre- 
viously exist in the benevolence which conceived the 
ends and prescribed the conditions for attaining them. 
If moral law be simply declarative of relations, — of 
the relations of the eternal nature of God to all other 
moral natures, — then the one immutable basis of law 
and of our duty to obey it, is in the eternal nature of 
God. 

9. All there is of truth in either of the other theo- 
ries which we have declined to accept, will be found, 
on examination, to lead more or less di- Supported 
rectly to the conclusion that the real foun- by other 
dation of moral obligation lies in the eter- 
nal nature of an infinite Being. Thus, 

1. If it be maintained that the will of God is the 
rule of right, and furnishes in itself the ultimate rea- 
son for its authority and for our obligation B thetlieo 
to obey it, the position can be held only by of a supreme 
vacating the word "will" of its distinctive 
meaning and making it denote merely a revelation of 
the Divine nature. As an expression of such a nature, 
which is at once the source and type of all other moral 



178 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

natures, it might be accepted as the basis of obligation. 
Were the Supreme Will arbitrary, sustained by power 
alone, it could have no more authority with rational 
beings than the will of any other being of like power. 
But the will of God as a bare expression of a perfect 
moral nature, of which ours is a copy, speaks to us 
with an authority to which omnipotence can lend no 
additional weight. Nor is it a valid objection to say 
that because will is always an expression of personal 
nature, therefore this theory is identical with, or equiv- 
alent to, that which bases obligation on the 

Ob j ection. 

bare will of God. The one valid objection 
to grounding it in the Supreme Will is, that mere will 
is absolute and decretive, and might change ; but to 
object to grounding obligation in the eternal nature of 
God because his nature might change, and so moral 
law and virtue be changeable, is idle, since it supposes 
an objection which is precluded by the very terms of 
the theory. To suppose that the eternal nature of 
God, and thus the eternal constitution of things as an 
expression of that nature, might change, is to suppose 
that which would be fatal to any immutable basis of 
obligation, and consequently fatal to all argumentation 
on the subject. 

2. Moral laws are useful in promoting human hap- 
piness, both individual and social, not because they 
By theories were ma de for this end, but because they 
of utility. reveal the constitution of things, and more 
especially because they represent the changeless attri- 
butes of the eternal Mind which determined, and is 
proclaimed by, the constitution of things. Whatever 



TEE ULTIMATE GROUND OF OBLIGATION. 179 

was the source of the universe must also have been the 
source of all natural laws, including the moral, which, 
in the truest sense of the word nature, are pre-eminently 
natural ; and the happiness of man is always in pro- 
portion to the degree of his consciousness of conform- 
ity to all known laws of his being. 

3. Attempts have been made to base obligation on 
simple and irresoluble principles of right, which the 
human mind intuitively and necessarily Theories of 
recognizes as in themselves authoritative, eternal prin- 
But scrutinizing this authority we find that 

it lies not so much in the principles as in reason by 
which a regard for the principles is enforced on the 
will; and that the weight of the authority is felt 
simply because we are morally constituted ; and as 
so constituted we are antitypes of that eternal moral 
nature whence all law has emanated, and where, con- 
sequently, all authority and ground of obligation must 
in reality and forever rest. 

4. Others find a basis for duty in sympathy, in a 
moral sense, or in conscience ; and in defending this 
position have either explicitly or implic- Theories of 
itly assumed that the authority which thus ^"nfandof 
speaks from within is ultimate, because it is conscience, 
the voice of God speaking through a nature which he 
had created in the likeness of his own. Sometimes 
it is affirmed that obligation springs from a fitness of 
things, eternal or created. But moral law 

° . Theories of 

accords with our idea of the eternal fitness of fitness of 
things, only because the moral universe, our- thinss - 
selves included, being constituted as it is, our moral 



180 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

intuitions are necessarily what they are ; and because 
the moral universe and our moral intuitions alike are 
but reflections of the eternal Mind. Doubtless the 
fitness of things in existing relations between moral 
beings may immediately suggest to us moral laws, but 
it does not therefore follow that the ground of obli- 
gation lies in the relations. Eelations between mere 
things, or between animals not moral, involve no 
moral laws ; and it may be that the relations between 
a moral being and a ravenous animal, or a poisonous 
serpent, involve no moral laws. But laws and moral 
obligations are always involved in the relations of 
moral beings, and involved, not because of the mere 
relations, but because of the moral natures of the 
beings related. The relations of parent and child, of 
Creator and creature, at once suggest and involve 
moral laws, but only because the beings thus related 
are morally constituted, and are reflections of that 
eternal moral nature which is the basis of the moral 



PAET III. 

PRACTICAL MORALITY. 

PRELIMINARY. 

§ 103. Practical Morality applies the principles of 
theoretic morality to personal life and conduct. Theo- 
retic morality treats of principles and truths ; practical 
morality, of precepts and duties. The first attempts 
to lay a philosophical basis for morality ; The aim of 
the second, to set forth explicitly, and by a practical 
method as nearly scientific as possible, the 
real obligations of men. For educated men in our day 
thorough grounding in the principles of morality is 
more serviceable than a knowledge of practical duties. 
Conduct that has become habitual from training and 
associations is more susceptible of change under the 
influence of principles than of precepts. And yet 
practical morality has its legitimate and necessary 
place in any complete account of morality. Its aim 
is to classify and enforce the duties of man in all his 
varied relations. His duties, grouped according to his 
relations, may be distributed under three general divis- 
ions : I. Duties to God. II. Duties to self. III. 
Duties to fellow-beings. 

Writers on practical duties, however, while recogniz- 

181 



182 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

ing with a good degree of uniformity these three classes 
of duties, are not agreed as to the order in which 
Order of con- they should be treated. Some begin with 
classes of one class and some with another. But 
duties. there are good reasons for beginning with 

duties to the Supreme Being. 

1. It is to God, as we have already said, that con- 
science, the supreme arbiter in the human soul, 
immediately and immovably points, as the Being by 
whose authority it enforces obligations. The deepest 
Conscience roots of moral conduct are in the religious 
Divineau- sentiments. Enlightened religious senti- 
tnority. ment always and necessarily reveals itself 
more or less distinctly in the moral conduct. It does 
so because the sentiment and the conduct spring from 
one and the same centre of inward conviction. A man 
always is what he really and religiously believes. 

2. God is the source of all moral laws, and furnishes 
Source of * n n i mse ^ our strongest and most ennobling 
law and mo- motives to action. Moral laws are simply 

declarative of his eternal nature. As com- 
mands and principles of action, the laws are most 
effectively enforced on the will by motives derived 
from the Divine nature. Emanating from God their 
office is to serve in bringing all hearts back to God. 
Brought back to Him human duties are fulfilled. 
Duties to Him should therefore precede all others 
in actual life ; and in scientific discussion should 
receive attention prior to all other duties. 

3. Duties to God should precede all others because 
fulfilment of them predisposes to a fulfilment of all 



PRACTICAL MORALITY. 183 

others. Supreme regard for the eternal Mind prompts 
to honest dealing with ourselves, and to continual 
regard for the weal of all men; the only Fulfilled 
never-failing well-spring of philanthropy SKS 
is true religion, or love to God. of others. 

4. The final aim of moral science is to assist in 
the cultivation of the completest character of which 
man is capable. Such a character consists of a harmo- 
nious union of all personal virtues. These As fumi^. 
virtues are copies of the imitable attri- ing basis of 

. . character, 

butes of our highest conceivable Being, they should 
i. e. of God. What we owe to a Being precede - 
standing in this relation to us should receive our first 
attention in the summation of human duties. 



DUTIES TO GOD. 



CHAPTER I. 

RECOGNITION OF COD IN NATURE. 

§ 104. The evidences of a pre-existent and predis- 
posing purpose in nature are too numerous and too 
distinct to be overlooked. With the pro- 
gress of natural science these evidences are ge ntwm 

every day becoming increasingly clear. No revealedin 

J J , . , nature. 

attempt to explain them away as express- 
ing neither thought nor will, but as being the result 
of happily combined but self-disposing forces, can 
satisfy reason. Rational intellect cannot be made to 
accept second causes as first cause. Nor does it suffice 
to say that science knows no other than second causes. 
Science may exhaust itself in tracing processes through 
secondary causes ; philosophy insists on a recognition 
of principles in the sense of sources and beginnings. 
With ever-increasing harmony, science and philosophy 
are uniting to assure us that in what we call Nature 
there is something more than physical forces; and 
that this something more wills and directs in physi- 
cal phenomena, and has done so from the beginning. 
The duty of reverently recognizing this Divine Mind 
in nature is evident from a variety of considerations. 
184 



RECOGNITION OF GOD IN NATURE. 185 

1. This recognition enables us to see in the provisions 
of nature a meaning not otherwise discernible, and 
thereby awakens emotions not otherwise awakened. 
Every provision of nature is suited to some imparts new 
human necessity ; regarded as the accidental ^^^f 
products of blindly working forces, these gifts, 
provisions simply awaken the feeling of self-gratula- 
tion at our having discovered their usefulness ; regard- 
ed as gifts of the all-wise and infinitely benevolent 
God, they awaken emotions of gratitude and love. As 
" finds," they convey to us no message ; as gifts, they 
speak to the heart. 

2. Eecognition of God in nature gives articulateness 
to the voice of natural law. Every undisputed law of 
nature declares the Divine will with as much Gives artieu . 
authority as if announced by an authenti- late voice to 
cated messenger. Laws of nature have their 
sequences or natural sanctions, and the sanctions speak 
to man respecting obedience and disobedience to the 
laws as explicitly as if conveyed in written words. 
He who sees in the sanctions a Divine will can read 
in them a language than which none can be more 
emphatic. 

3. It gives a finer quality of morality than a regard 
for law as a mere blind order of sequence can ever 
impart. A species of real morality may Gives fine- 
doubtless be his who is influenced in his ness ° 

quality to 

actions solely by regard to their natural re- morality, 
suits. But such a morality, even with the most en- 
lightened, cannot fail to be bloodless and cold. The 
motives prompting to it can neither spring from, nor 



186 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

take hold of, the inner powers of the soul. With 
the vast majority of mankind it would, at the best, 
be but negative and inanimate, — mere abstinence 
from such acts as are known to bring mischief in their 
train, and nothing more. 

4. A true inward morality can exist only when the 
affections are aroused and enlisted ; and only personal 
intelligence and will can arouse them in Awakens 
persons. Hence the superiority of biogra- J^na? 
phy and example as compared with precept, fections. 
and of literature as compared with didactic instruc- 
tion. He who sees a Divine purpose in the processes 
and results of nature, receives from them an impulse 
to good which can never be his who simply sees in 
them a marvellous and unpurposed succession of me- 
chanical or chemical phenomena. 



CHAPTER II. 



RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES. 



§ 105. Some kind of reverent and habitual manifes- 
tation of regard for the Divine Being is both natural 
and useful. Its naturalness is evident from Religious ob- 
the prevalence of religious rites and cere- ^aturaiand 
monies among peoples most dissimilar and useful, 
isolated from one another. Religious observances 
seem to be instinctive in origin, and to warrant the 
well-known designation of man as a "religious animal." 
That the observances are useful is evident from their 
influence on character. The moral difference between 
a devout man and a scorner, or between a people 
scrupulously religious and a people openly irreligious, 
tells a plain story which none but the wilfully blind 
can fail to see and feel the force of. 

Two comprehensive kinds of duties to God demand 
attention, and they are specially noteworthy worship and 
in this connection because of their service- the SaDDath - 
ableness to morals : viz. Worship, and the consecration 
of one day in seven to religious uses. 

§ 106. 1. Worship. This is due to God: 

First, because he is God; just as a recognition of 
the highest personal worth is due from worship due 
man to man. Men instinctively do rever- JJ^JJiJ^ 
ence to those who are greatly their superi- God. 

187 



188 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

ors, especially if at the same time they are benefactors. 
God is the infinitely Supreme One and the universal 
Benefactor. Worship is due to him, not because he 
needs it, but because it is in the highest degree fitting 
that it should be paid to him. Great men, with all 
their imperfections, have been commemorated in 
statue and verse, — have in a sense been worshipped, 
— not because they needed it, but because of its 
fitness as a recognition of worth. The infinitely best 
Being in the universe, whom no statue nor picture 
can represent, and from whom every good gift to 
mortals has proceeded, is entitled to the devoutest 
reverence and worship that rational beings can pay. 

2. Worship is due to God on account of our own 
relation to him. We are objects of his constant care 
and benefactions. Ingratitude for benefits received is 

not only a sign of baseness, but itself debases. 

Worship due n 

from our re- Gratitude refines and calls into exercise the 
lationtohim. finer and no \>\ eT impulses of the soul. No 

principle is more effectively constructive of character 
than the love prompted by genuine gratitude. The 
love of gratitude spontaneously expressing itself in 
forms of worship, and the naturally accompanying 
deeds of beneficence to men, ennobles human nature 
as nothing else ever can. 

3. The influence of the object worshipped on char- 
acter shows it to be our duty to worship God. Every 
From its in- one nas some object of supreme regard; 
fluenceon that object stamps his character; he inevit- 
ably becomes like his God or his idol. 

Only an infinitely perfect Being, therefore, should be 



RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES. 189 

the object of man's worship. God as such a Being 
should be worshipped for the reactionary influence of 
the worship on character, even if for no higher reason. 
But there are higher reasons. Some of them are 
found in a conscious quickening of soul in its com- 
munion with God in worship. Others are found in 
answer to prayer. Prayer, which is petition as well 
as adoration and thanksgiving, and a most essential 
part of religious worship, is answered in other ways 
than by moral and spiritual reaction on the heart. 
Even this reaction would fail were we fully assured 
that no other answer could ever be received. On the 
character of him who is confidently expectant that his 
petitions will be heard, the preservative and moulding 
influence of prayer is unmistakable. 

4. The connection of the religious sentiment with 
morals, both public and private, points directly to the 
duty to worship God. Worship is both the F rom con- 
parent and the nurse of this sentiment. nectionof 

£_ .. the religious 

Whatever may be our theory or its connec- sentiment 
tion with morals, nothing is clearer his- Wlth morals - 
torically than that with the decline of a people's reli- 
gion there has always been a corresponding decline in 
its morality. Even the worst religions have put some 
degree of restraint on some forms of evil, and with the 
relaxing of its restraints descent to a lower moral level 
has at once and uniformly begun. Christianity is pre- 
eminently an ethical religion. One undeviating aim 
of all its required religious observances is to keep 
alive and intensify, through the religious sentiment, 
the moral convictions ; its never-failing purpose is to 



190 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

make "zealous of good works"; and in the fulfilment 
of its purpose, one of its most fundamental require- 
ments is supreme devotion to G-od. 

§ 107. 2. Duty of devoting one day in seven to 
religious uses. Many reasons can be adduced in en- 
Duty of re- forcement of this duty, but only those of an 
s&rvtog^ne" ethical import need here be specified, and 
day in seven. f these only such as are suggested by the 
individual and social needs of men. A Sunday or 
Sabbath should be religiously observed, because, 

1. We need such a day for rest and recuperation. 
This need, according to the Jewish scriptures, was rec- 
ognized from the first, and to provide for it there was 
Needed for established the Sabbath, or as the word 
rest and re- signifies, the day of rest. Abundant evi- 
dence exists that the life of man and beast 

is prolonged, and the capacity of both for labor is 
increased, by a regular recurrence of a seventh day's 
suspension of toil. A multiplicity of holidays, how- 
ever, which are to be carefully distinguished from 
Sabbath observances, promotes neither industry nor 
good morals, but to devote one seventh of our time 
religiously to rest and reflection economizes time and 
conserves morals. 

2. We need a weekly day of rest from secular toil 
for self-scrutiny, for informing ourselves respecting 

our moral obligations, and for reflection on 

Needed for ° 

instruction our personal habits, characters, and aims, 
and self- j n ^ e never-ceasing conflict with evil, 

scrutiny. ° ' 

within and around us, nothing but an ever- 
widening knowledge of ourselves and our duties 



RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES. 191 

can insure us the final victory. The need of such a 
day was never before in the world's history so great 
as in our hurrying and unreflecting age. 

3. People who unitedly devote one day in seven to 
religious uses, and largely to public worship, mutually 
strengthen and quicken each other in the pursuit of 
all that is good and in the conflict with all For quicken- 
that is evil. Men who take and pay their JU^S 
vows together at the same altar become aiigood. 
tacit guardians of one another amid the temptations 
of life. 

4. A proper religious use of Sunday exerts a 
wholesome influence on the undevout, immoral, and 
vicious. It may not make them virtuous, For its re- 
but it restrains and sometimes leads to stramin s in- 
fluence on 

better thoughts and habits. Additional to the immoral 

all other reasons for a religious use of Sun- and V1C10US - 
day should be, with educated and reflecting men, the 
influence of their example on the ignorant and the 
vicious. In a free Eepublic like ours this consideration 
should come home to every man's conscience with 
force. 



CHAPTER III. 

WORKING TOGETHER WITH GOD. 

§ 108. The world gives evidence of a plan in its 
constitution and in the co-operative tendency of its 
forces towards intelligible ends. History reveals a 
The world constant though gradual rise of the race 
shows designs from a lower to a higher level. Over the 
forces of nature and the wills of men has 
presided a forecasting wisdom and a predetermining 
will. It may be a " far-off event " towards which all 
things move, but it manifestly is an event towards 
which a Supreme Power and Will are carrying all 
things forward. With this Power and Will it mani- 
festly is the duty of all men to co-operate. 

1. Co-operation, if it reach no higher stage than that 

of unmurmuring and consciously acquiescent surrender 

to the Divine will, brings rest to the soul. 

Acquies- ° 

cencemthe In times of bereavement or overthrow of 
wmbrin s cherished hopes, such submission gives a 
rest to the repose that nothing else can minister and 
nothing disturb. But the sullen submission 
of the materialist is not to be confounded with the con- 
scious acquiescence of the Christian theist. Dumb 
stoicism is measurelessly better than the self-chafing 

192 



WORKING TOGETHER WITH GOB. 193 

spirit of the pessimist, but the calm and patient trust 
of the Christian is incomparably better than either. 

2. A co-operation that rises to the degree of self- 
sacrificing activity, — that waits and watches for op- 
portunities to hasten forward the purposes Active co- 
towards which sovereign Power and Will are ^^_ 
manifestly shaping human affairs, — brings light. 

a higher boon than repose : it brings the delight of con- 
scious movement towards the highest ends ; more than 
all, it brings the delight of fellowship with the select 
spirits of the universe in a common working together 
with the infinite Will which rules over all. There is a 
great deep of meaning in the Psalmist's words: "I 
delight to do thy will, God." 

3. An earnest endeavor to work together with the 
recognized Divine will in the world calls into exercise 
all the best powers of the soul. Nothing more effec- 
tively lifts a man out of himself, or more caiisinto 
rapidly straightens him up toward the dig- thesoui's 11 
nity of true manhood, than conscious and *> est powers, 
unselfish co-operation with good men in acts of benefi- 
cence to mankind. If to this unselfish co-operation 
there be added the conviction that in so doing we are 
fulfilling the sovereign and gracious Will that rules 
and shapes the universe, there are awakened the most 
ennobling emotions that mortals ever know. This 
conviction, with its accompanying emotions, once 
getting possession of an individual or of a generation 
an epoch at once ensues. Biographies and histories 
abound in accounts of such epochs. 

4. The conscious feeling of co-operation with God 



194 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

has resulted in some of the most marked achievements 
Has nerved of our race. The moral heroes of the world 
achieve- 6 ' nave furnished abundant examples of what 
merits. this feeling can accomplish. A man of low 

moral type, but of great endowments, like Napoleon, 
animated by this feeling in a perverted form of it, 
believing himself to be a "man of destiny," may be 
borne on by it to gigantic enterprises, and through 
selfishness to final ruin. To this feeling, in a higher 
type of it, Cromwell and his " Ironsides " were more 
indebted for victory in their desperate battles than to 
any other single cause. And to this feeling are multi- 
tudes of men in private life indebted for success in 
fighting their unwritten battles with evil. 



DUTIES TO ONE'S SELF. 



CHAPTER I. 

REALITY OF DUTIES TO SELF. 

§ 109. The reality of this class of duties has some- 
times been disputed. Some moralists have maintained 
that all morality lies within the relations of man to 
man. Others have insisted that all human duties are 
comprised in the two classes of duties to Kealityof 

our fellow-beings and duties to God. Thus duties to 

self. 
James Martineau rejects " duties to self," — 

"which," he says, "can be saved from contradiction 
only by an impossibility, viz. : the splitting ourselves 
into two, susceptible of reciprocal obligations." And 
in fact it would at first thought seem impossible that 
one and the same person can be both debtor and credi- 
tor to himself. 

But the difficulty is only a seeming one. Every 
man in consciousness distinguishes between himself 
as observing and as observed, — as subject Self con . 
and object. As subject he is conscious of sciousiy dis- 
perpetually regulating the conduct of him- as subject 
self as object, — of prohibiting or pre- and ^in- 
scribing to himself certain lines of action. This he 
could not do unless he distinguished between him- 

195 



196 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

self as subject, owing something to himself as object. 
Dr. Martineau in recognizing the duties of " self -sur- 
render" and "self-culture," implicitly admits what he 
explicitly denies. The truth is, man as intrusted with 
the power of self-control and self-direction is thereby 
charged with duties to himself. 

The responsibility of every one for his own charac- 
ter makes a distinct class of duties to self a neces- 
Responsibii- sitv - Character, it is true, is largely the 
ity for char- outcome of intercourse with fellow-beings, 

acterin- ° 

voives duties and one test of what is due from us in this 
to self. intercourse is to be found in the reaction- 

ary influence of conduct towards others on ourselves. 
And yet to attempt to say all that needs to be said of 
what is due to ourselves, while treating of what we 
owe to our fellows, is to run the risk of either a con- 
fusion of duties or a withholding from self its due 
share of attention. 

Duties to self may be grouped under three classes : 

1. Those existing at all times and in all places. 

2. Those arising from the relations of human society. 

3. Those arising under special circumstances. 



CHAPTER II. 

DUTIES TO SELr ALWAYS AND EVERYWHERE. 

§ 110. I. Duty of self-enlightenment, of informing 
one's self respecting the laws of his threefold constitu- 
tion, the physical, the mental, and the moral. 1. Obe- 
dience to the laws of one's physical organism is the 
first condition of mental and moral health. „ „. 

Obedience to 

Violation of these laws is sure sooner or physical 
later to impair both strength and clearness laws ' 
of intellect, and to derange the moral affections. One of 
the first duties, therefore, of every one, and especially 
of an educated man, is to inform himself, respecting 
the laws of his bodily constitution, and most rigidly 
to comply with them. A violation of them, even 
through ignorance, is a fault for which at this day 
there is no excuse, and a crime against self, for 
which no after regrets can atone. 

2. The laws of mind are just as real and just 
as inexorable as those of body. They are not far to 
seek, nor difficult to comprehend. The conditions of 
mental health and growth are so clearly to laws of 
revealed in every human experience, that mind • 
no educated man, however unobserving, can fail to 
have some knowledge of them thrust on his attention. 
To refuse compliance with the conditions is to incur 

197 



198 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

penalties which can be neither misunderstood nor 
evaded. 

3. The laws of the moral nature are more numer- 
ous and more complex than those of either body 
To moral or mind, because interwoven with them, 
laws. an( j y e £ a iik e w ith them are easily dis- 

cerned and clearly understood ; and on knowing and 
obeying them depends above all else the final issues 
of human life. Wilfully to violate these laws, or 
wilfully to remain in ignorance of them, is to store up 
in memory the fuel of a fire of self-accusings which 
no repentance can extinguish. 

§ 111. II. Duties of self-discipline and self-culture. 

These are but two sides of the one great duty of every 

human being to develop himself into an 

Self-develop- . & r ■•,■,-,-, 

raent into a harmonious and the largest possible whole. 

whoTe° niOUS Pre P aratoi 7 t0 tne fulfilment of this duty, 
parental training and good associations are 
indispensably serviceable. But without self-determin- 
ing activity, the duty will remain unperformed ; and 
the end enjoined unattained. To attain the end, the 
associate duties of self-discipline and self-cultivation 
must have unremitted attention. First of all and 
fundamentally necessary is the duty of disciplining 
every part of our nature into fitness for its appointed 
function. 

1. Self-discipline. Man is the embodiment of self- 
developing instincts, appetites, impulses, capacities, 
seif-disci- and powers. Some of these are to serve 
piine. an( j others to rule. Each has its appropri- 

ate function. No one of them can be exterminated 



DUTIES TO SELF. 199 

or maltreated without some degree of permanent 
injury to the whole personality; but each is to be held 
to its appointed office. Such as are to serve should 
be rigidly disciplined into obedience ; and such as are 
to rule should be disciplined only that they may be 
cultivated into the completest fitness for their offices. 
A few examples of what is meant will suffice. 

1. Man has instincts and appetites in common 
with all animals. These have their offices in the con- 
servation of life and the perpetuation of the instincts and 
species. But reason is their superior and a PP etltes - 
should rule them. If not ruled they will rule. As 
servants, their service will be rendered only as they 
are steadily held in subjection. Whatever has its 
seat and source in the bodily organism must be hum- 
bled into obedience to the soul's higher power, or its 
true function will not be performed. 1 

2. Man is also subject to various passions. Uncon- 
trolled instincts wax into passions. They are sure to 
become passions when their objects become 
cherished objects of thought. Such objects 

may kindle passions into devouring flames. Passion 

1 The grossest vices to which human beings are liable have their origin in 
misuse of the bodily senses of taste and touch : from the first come gluttony 
and drunkenness ; from the second, unchastity. The duty of temperance, in 
the sense of abstinence from intoxicants, is now so well understood as to 
need here simply to be stated. Considerations of health of body and mind, 
to name no higher motives, should be enough to enforce it. Chastity, from 
motives of false modesty, is less frequently dwelt on, and as a result un- 
chastity, though less conspicuous before the eyes of men than intemperance, 
is more prevalent. The penalties of unchastity, and the vice into which it 
plunges, less marked it may be to the common eye than those of intemper- 
ance, are not a whit less ruinous, impairing health, blunting the sensibilities, 
poisoning the fountain of moral life, and blighting the whole soul ; in one 
form of it sometimes ending in idiocy or insanity. 



200 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

is vehement emotion begotten by objects of thought, 
painful while it lasts, and ceasing only when expended 
in actions, or choked by a stronger emotion aroused by 
another object of thought. The duty of man is so to 
hold his emotional nature in check by a well-balanced 
variety of objects of thought, that no passion shall 
ever master him, and that every rising passion can 
be speedily mastered. Uncurbed passions run into 
vices, and vices as moral cancers eat into the vitals of 
the soul. 

3. The imagination, as one of the fruitful sources 
of moral good and evil, the foster-parent of some 
Theimagi- of the worst, as well as some of the best 
nation. emotions that ever haunt the human heart, 

needs constant care and discipline to keep it to 
its legitimate offices. The seeds of moral life and 
death are in its hands. Trained to busy itself with 
images of moral beauty, and hanging these in the 
chambers of the mind, it may be made the handmaid 
of every virtue. Allowed to hold before the mind's 
eye images that inflame the passions, it drags into 
filth before one is aware of its power. 

II. Duty of self-culture. This duty is manifest 

from three very simple considerations : 1. The endow- 

Evidence of men ts of man, germinal at the outset and 

the duty of capable of development, were manifestly 

ure. i nten( } e( j £ b e harmoniously developed. 

2. There is an ideal manhood which all the higher 
powers of our nature bid us strive to attain to, and 
towards which it is possible for us continually to rise. 

3. To make any progress toward our ideal, some of 



DUTIES TO SELF. 201 

our endowments must be trained into submission and 
service, and others into fulness of strength and of 
power to command. For submission and service, self- 
discipline, already considered, provides ; for the office 
of control there must be added to discipline a positive 
culture. And if we would make the closest possible 
approach to the realization of a high ideal, there must 
be culture of the threefold and correlated powers of 
our nature, the physical, the mental, and the moral. 

1. As a basis for a full and harmonious develop- 
ment of the whole personality, there must first of all 
be a well-trained and well-developed body ; Physical 
not only a body whose instincts and appe- self - culture - 
tites have been disciplined into subjection, whose laws 
of health have been just sufficiently cared for to ward 
off disease, but a body so trained by vigorous exercise 
into robustness and power of endurance that it can 
bear with ease the tax made on it by daily mental 
toil, and have in reserve ample resource for emer- 
gencies. To make the most that can be made of our 
physical organism is simply to fit ourselves for the 
largest and best possible use of every other power of 
our nature. 

2. Mental self-culture, (a) This takes up and car- 
ries forward what self -discipline prepares for and be- 
gins. It nurtures and keeps the mind active in the 
acquisition of knowledge. (5) In the processes of 
growth and acquisition are found the most Men tai seif- 
innocent and some of the most exhilarating culture. 

of human pleasures. With moral and religious ends 
in view, these processes minister the purest and most 



202 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

refining of human satisfactions. What can thus minis- 
ter to human enjoyment, every good impulse of man's 
nature prompts him to make his own. (c) Mental 
culture, furthermore, is a duty, because, like physical 
culture, necessary for a complete performance of other 
duties. No man can so completely discharge all duties 
and responsibilities of this life that with stronger pow- 
ers of mind and wider range of knowledge he might 
not discharge them more perfectly, (d) New and 
higher duties, also, are constantly presenting them- 
selves and calling for stronger powers and ampler 
resources. He who from lack of preparation finds 
himself unfit for the higher duties when they come, 
finds in his failure the humiliating penalty of a neg- 
lected duty, — a duty which would have given ample 
reward in the pleasure of its performance ; and a duty 
whose rewards and penalties terminate in no single 
experience, but reduplicate themselves with the multi- 
plication of years. No man can foresee what is before 
him, and none can overestimate the importance of cul- 
tivating his mind and adding to his knowledge by 
diligent use of every opportunity that offers. 

3. Moral self-culture, (a) This, like mental self- 
culture, requires closeness and constancy of attention. 
Moral self- No fitful and transient efforts will suffice to 
culture. bring it. It comes by successive but uni- 

form steps, proceeding from the barely negative to 
the most uncompromisingly positive. (&) It consists 
not alone in abstinence from the wrong, but in choos- 
ing and in persistently pursuing whatever is recognized 
as right. All self-discipline, of whatever kind, is pre- 



DUTIES TO SELF. 203 

paratory to it , culture of both body and mind sub- 
serve it. But without moral self-culture incomplete- 
ness of character is sure to exist, whatever may have 
been the degree of both bodily and mental training. 
No natural gifts, be they ever so many or so great, and 
no acquisitions, be they ever so large, can conceal or 
compensate the want of it. (c) The imperativeness of 
the duty of moral self-culture exceeds that of all other 
kinds of self-culture. To its imperativeness the power 
of habit adds special weight, and it is re-enforced 
by the trace which every thought, word, and deed 
leaves on the soul from which it proceeds. 

No action, whether foul or fair, 

Is ever done but it leaves somewhere 

A record, written by fingers ghostly 

As a blessing or a curse, and mostly 

In the greater weakness or greater strength 

Of the acts which follow it. 

(d) The mysterious power of habit over one's peace 
of mind, as well as over the final issues of life, bids us 
beware how we cultivate ourselves morally. A right 
moral spirit, the product of good moral habits, will 
enable us to endure with composure, if not to repair, 
the mischief wrought by evil habits of both body 
and mind, but the mischief of bad moral habits noth- 
ing can enable us to bear calmy, much less to repair. 
The one preparation above all others for real success 
in life — the sole foundation for a character that can 
survive every test — is to be found only in habitua- 
tion of heart and will to unyielding compliance with 
the requirements of truth and right. 



204 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

§ 112. V. Duty of maintaining a proper self-respect, 
i. e. the duty of always so acting, inwardly and out- 
wardly, as not only not to be ashamed of one's self, but 
Duty of to feel that we have not forfeited the respect 
seif-respect. f r ight-minded people, (a) Self-respect is 
to be carefully distinguished from self-complacency 
and self-conceit. Self-complacency is always a sign of 
vanity and weakness. Self-conceit is an over-estimate 
of one's abilities or merits, and is quite as much a sign 
of intellectual as of moral defect. Neither the self- 
complacent nor the self-conceited fail to get rudely 
and rightly jostled in our hard matter-of-fact world. 
(&) But self-respect is at once a requisite and a qualifi- 
cation for the respect of others. A loss of it is pretty 
sure in due time to entail a loss of the respect of 
others, though the disrespect of others by no means 
insures a disrespect for self. On the contrary, with a 
clear consciousness of right, the more one is reviled 
by the vicious, the ignorant, or the prejudiced, the 
stronger, if steadfast in his rectitude, will be his self- 
respect, (c) But no man who is conscious of being a 
sham, a cheat, a hypocrite, can ever respect himself. 
He can be self-complacent and self-conceited, but in 
his inmost soul he will be conscious of self-contempt. 
The duty of every rational being is so to act, to think, 
and to be, that he can always preserve unimpaired 
a well-grounded self-respect. 

True dignity abides with him alone 
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
Can still suspect, and still revere himself, 
In lowliness of heart. 



CHAPTER II. 

DUTIES TO SELF IN SOCIAL AND CIVIL RELATIONS, 

§ 113. We begin life in this world as members of 
human society and under civil governments. For 
healthful continuance of life and normal development 
of powers, social relations and civil protection are 
indispensable. But society is an organism Duties to 
having its own unwritten laws, and for its S0C i et y and 
preservation is also necessarily under civil the state, 
governments. As a community of individual rights 
society must have its government for their adjustment 
and protection. To the laws of both society and the 
state every one is amenable ; but in obeying the laws 
every one has duties to himself. A few of these 
duties are entitled to notice. 

§ 114. I. Duty to ascertain and intelligently care for 
one's personal rights. Querulousness and over sensi- 
tiveness about them is not intelligent care T , „. 

° Intelligent 

for them. Such care requires that we first care for per- 
decide why they exist, and what they are, sonal rights * 
and then defend them. 

1. The ground of personal rights is in personal 
obligations. They also may have their seat The ground 
in the inherent dignity of personality itself, ° f personal 
but only because personality is endowed 
with the highest of conceivable obligations. If I have 



206 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

obligations I have the imprescriptible right to what- 
ever is necessary to the fulfilment of the obligations. 
Society and government transcend their authority if 
they deprive me of aught necessary to this fulfilment. 
Duty to self requires me to see to it that I am not 
thus interfered with. 

2. Of one's personal rights the following among 
many may be instanced: 1. The right of self- 
defence. This is in a sense a duty as well as a right. 
Eight of It is a duty as well as a right, because 

self-defence, j^ ig & tm ^ &nd nQ Qne ^ ^ liberty 

to allow himself to be robbed of it. It is a right, 
because on the continuance of life, even at the ex- 
pense of the life of him who would take it, depends 
the performance of duties. If, furthermore, care for 
our own lives and the love of self are measures of 
the degree of care and love due from us to others, 
then self-defence is a personal right. If the right 
be denied, one of the strongest bars for the safety of 
life in any community is removed, and the first step 
towards anarchy is taken. But retaliation and re- 
venge are forbidden alike by religion and morality. 

2. A right to the protection of one's acquisitions, 
both of property and of good name. Civil laws 
recognize the rights of property and protect them. 
They also professedly recognize the rights of reputa- 
nightsof tion, but through maladministration of law 
property and these are practically defenceless. A free 

reputation. p regs an( } f ree S p eec h are now no t unfre- 

quently degraded with impunity into vehicles of 
vituperation, slander, and libel. The most irre- 



DUTIES TO SELF. 207 

proachable character, if it stand in the way of parti- 
san ends, is not safe from the attacks of unscrupulous 
writers and speakers. The danger arising to our free 
institutions from the unwillingness of reputable men 
to enter political life lest their good names shall be 
smirched and blackened, is becoming to thoughtful 
men a matter of grave consideration. Not till some 
restraint can be put upon the present reckless use of 
tongue and pen in defamation of character will the 
state be able to secure for itself, when it desires it, 
the service of all its best citizens. In vain is civil 
process now appealed to for protection. Effectual 
defence must be sought for elsewhere. Public sen- 
timent ought to be strong enough to ostracize from 
the society of honorable men a known defamer and 
calumniator as quickly and decisively as it would a 
convicted thief or robber. 

3. Personal convictions and beliefs are inviolable 
personal rights. Society and civil governments med- 
dling with these transcend their authority. „. , ijt 

° . . . Right to 

And the propagation of any opinion not in- personal 
consistent with the ends for which society anTbeiiefs 3 
and civil government exist, is also a per- with nmita- 
sonal right. 1 But with the propagation of 
opinions and principles which, if carried into action, 
would break up the foundations of society, civil gov- 
ernment not only has the authority to interfere, but 
is false to its trust if it does not interfere. No man 
has any more right to propagate sentiments destruc- 
tive of property or of life than he has to commit 

» See pp. 77, 78. 



208 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

theft or murder. Liberty of conscience, however, 
so slowly admitted among nations in the past, now 
so emphatically avowed among all intelligent peoples, 
and yet so strenuously denied by dominant religions 
in different parts of the world, is accompanied, even 
when allowed its utmost range, by only a fraction of 
the evils attendant on its enslavement. ISTo more 
direct bribe to intellectual dishonesty, 1 and thus to 
inward immorality, was ever devised than the demand, 
whether by society or by the state, that all shall be- 
lieve alike. 

4. No one, so long as not interfering with the 
happiness or rights of other people, can justly be de- 
prived of the control of his own person or of the 
persons of his children. And yet, if chil- 
se°if andcMi- dren ^ e neglected, or if from want of care 
drenmaybe for self and children there be exposure to 

restricted. . . 

contagious or infectious disease, and the 
health and happiness of a community are endangered, 
the right of personal control is forfeited. Communi- 
ties have a right so far to restrict the personal liber- 
ties of their members as to guard themselves against 
a common exposure to disease and death. 

§ 115. II. Duty to self of having a regular occupa- 
tion. Human endowments to be developed must be 

1 It is quite the fashion among those who scorn all religious beliefs to charge 
those who hold to them as lacking in intellectual honesty. The temptations 
to insincerity in religious beliefs are too slight to be appreciable in a day and 
land where neither social advancement nor political promotion in any way 
depend on them ; but whenever and wherever advancement and promotion 
have depended on them, the temptation has not been wanting, nor has it 
been lacking in power. A brief glance at the. history of New England in the 
18th century will illustrate this ; and for Europe, see Lecky's History of the 
Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe, vol. 1, pp. 335, 428, and vol. 2, 
p. 95. 



DUTIES TO SELF. 209 

exercised. In childhood the needed exercise is sup- 
plied by natural and irrepressible impulse. But when 
the zest of first acquisition has passed away, and the 
monotony of life has set in, only a definite Need of per _ 
exertion of will can take the place of nat- sonaioccu- 
ural impulse ; only rational considerations pa 10n ' 
and fixed purpose can carry forward what natural 
impulse has begun. Mind and body, left to acci- 
dental stimulation to action, neither become in them- 
selves what they are capable of becoming, nor accom- 
plish results worthy of rational beings. Eegularly 
recurring mental occupation, and stated bodily exer- 
cise, are unquestionable duties to self, because, 

1. They are unalterable conditions to health and 
happiness. Health and happiness in a normal con- 
dition coexist ; but they are not inseparable. Necessary t0 
Great unhappiness may exist with excellent health and 
bodily health ; and there may be happiness happmess - 
in spite of bodily disease and pain. But, other things 
being equal, a stated occupation brings health of both 
body and mind. Obligation to " work for a living " 
is one of the last things for a sensible man to repine 
at. If labor is ever a curse, a resolute purpose to 
bear the curse transforms it into a blessing. Ennui, 
the curse for idleness, finds its only cure in industry. 
God is the blessed or happy God, but he "hath worked 
hitherto " and still works. 

2. Occupations guard against temptations and vice. 
Poetry and popular proverbs reiterate the dangers 
of idleness. The multiplying examples of Dangers of 
youthful indolence and idleness followed 



210 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

by crime emphasize, in our day as never before, the 
duty of self -habituation to some kind of pursuit. 

3. Eegulated activities are a safeguard against 
the dangers of inherited wealth, — dangers created, it 
may be, by the mistaken kindness of well-meaning 
but unwise parents. Against the dangers of an inher- 
ited fortune, without preparation for a right use of it, 
the only safeguard is a resolute purpose to hold one's 
self steadily to some object of pursuit. One's first 
safeguard duty, doubtless, is to take care, if he can, of 
against the kig own pecuniary and personal affairs, or 

dangers of . 

inherited at least to superintend the care of them by 
wealth. others. But there are numberless offices in 

society and the state which men of capacity, and 
of leisure such as wealth confers, can gratuitously fill 
with the greatest advantage both to themselves and 
others. The John Howards and Elizabeth Frys might 
be multiplied indefinitely with incalculable advantage 
to our race. The administration of public charities 
could well be in such hands rather than in the hands 
of paid officials. Were offices of public trust, and 
even of state, more frequently given to men whose 
wealth is too ample and whose integrity is too well- 
established for the temptation to peculation to affect 
them, charges of official corruption might be less 
frequent and less credible than they now are. 

§ 116. III. Duty of living for worthy ends. Every 
one has, consciously or unconsciously, some predomi- 
nant aim or ruling purpose in life. Duty to 
^iife yendS se ^ rec L u i res that this purpose shall be a 
worthy one and fit for a rational being to 



DUTIES TO SELF. 211 

pursue. Few ends, it may be, are absolutely good 
or bad ; the relatively good and bad are as numerous 
as are the varieties of human taste, talent, and oppor- 
tunity. 

1. One step towards deciding what ends are worthy 
will be to eliminate some of the unworthy. 

1. The pursuit of pleasure is not a worthy aim in 
life. As mere gratification of the senses, pleasure is 
an unworthy end to live for, because it is a Pursuitof 
degradation of our higher powers to the pleasure 
office of ministering to the lower. Nature notworth y- 
brands such pleasure as unworthy by making it elu- 
sive to the seeker, or by transforming it into pain 
when the seeker thinks he has found it. And even 
the highest pleasures elude us, when sought for their 
own sake. Nature drops them silently and only into 
the bosoms of those whom she finds working content- 
edly in the paths of duty. 

2. The seeking of great riches is not a worthy 
aim in life. The love of gain is undoubtedly natural 
and universal. It is a most useful impulse. Its 
service in the economy of nature is to fore- 

,,.,..,, , . Besire for 

stall individual want, and to stimulate great riches 
society into countless industries. But as unwortli y- 
an inordinate desire it contracts and shrivels the 
whole soul, deadening the moral sensibilities, and 
never becoming a dominant passion without tempting 
to trench on the rights and happiness of others. It 
may not be the grossest, but it is the meanest, because 
the most selfish, passion that ever tyrannizes over the 
human heart. The ambition to be rich, for the sake 



212 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

of the show it will enable one to make, is too puerile 
for a rational being to be conscious of and not be 
ashamed to own it. Riches craved for the pleasure 
and gratification they are expected to give prove de- 
lusive. The pleasures of hope and of acquisition are 
real, but the pleasure of possession never fails in the 
end to disappoint. 

3. Honors, offices, and applause are not worthy to 
be made objects of pursuit. Earely if ever honorably 
attained when confessedly sought, they never satisfy 
Honors, if dishonorably secured. If attained and 
applause not satisfying, they must come unsought and 
worthy. as ^ e aW ards of recognized worth. Even 
when sought secondarily as the rewards of deserving 
services, the only real satisfaction they can minister 
will be in the exhilaration of pursuit to which, as 
distant objects of hope, they are capable of prompting. 
As possessions which have been eagerly sought they 
never satisfy. 

II. But there are worthy ends which duty to self re- 
quires should be sought. Whatever pursuit ennobles 
worthy the pursuer, and at the same time benefits 
ends. mankind, proves thereby its worthiness and 

its rightful demands on us. 

1. It is a worthy aim, and thus a duty to self, 
to subordinate one's own private ends to the common 
weal. This is a duty, because alone in doing it does 
To subordi- any one attain to the largest measure of his 
thecomaon personal being. It is a moral law as well 
weal. as a religious truth, that whoever will lose 

himself for the benefit of others will unexpectedly 



DUTIES TO SELF. 213 

find himself, and himself clothed " with garments of 
praise," the blessings of the thankful. The unselfish 
heart that sends out its thoughts of mercy over so- 
ciety will find these, like the aerial roots of the ban- 
yan-tree, striking into the soil below, and drawing 
thence an ever-increasing nourishment. The more it 
gives the more it is enriched. The clouds that scatter 
their showers to-day prepare for new clouds and 
showers to-morrow. 

2. Every one owes it to himself to contribute 
his full share to the common possessions of men, 
material, intellectual, and moral. Society 
always is what the individuals composing ute tothe 
it make it ; and in return, every individual, 
to become the best he is capable of, must 
depend on society. From society he draws back 
with compound interest all he can give to it. But 
society owes him not a farthing except in return for 
what he has first given. It owes no mortal a living 
who has not first earned his living by contributing 
to the common store. If it saves the indolent from 
starving, it does so solely as a gratuity. If any one 
would make the world his debtor he must make it 
the richer for his having been in it. 



CHAPTER III. 

DUTIES IN SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 

§ 117. Occasions are liable to occur in the lives 
of all men involving disaster and perils. Human 
Cireum- sagacity may not foresee their coming ; 
stances of if foreseen, human power may not be 
able to avert their coming. But fore- 
thought and reflection may in some degree prepare 
for them, that when they come they shall not appall 
us. To be so engrossed with the present as to be 
wholly unmindful of the future is not rational ; and 
not to ask ourselves and answer the questions, how 
in given emergencies such as we know are liable to 
occur in the life of every man, we would conduct 
ourselves, is to be deficient in the exercise of that 
foresight which is characteristic of a rational being. 

§ 118. 1. Every one owes it to himself to be patient 
and submissive under disappointments and losses. 
Coming unexpectedly, these may overwhelm with 
Duty of surprise, and even fill with inconsolable 

patience and grief. Murmuring and repining, so far 
from relieving the grief, only intensify the 
sense of it. Duty to self simply bids us be calm and 
learn the lesson the losses teach us. The design of 

214 



DUTIES IN SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 215 

all trials is, as the word implies, that by testing us 
they may teach us. He is a wise man who is atten- 
tive to their teaching. Tribulation may harrow the 
heart, but only that the heart may bring forth the 
more abundant fruits of righteousness. 

1. But there are irreparable losses ; losses under 
which life seems insupportable. Lost friends, ruined 
reputations, vanished fortunes, sometimes break the 
spirit into despair. A disease may be in- irreparable 
curable, and accompanied with torturing losses - 
pain. Is any one ever at liberty under such circum- 
stances to take his own life? 

2. Suicide is always a confession of moral cow- 
ardice. If by suicide the dependent and helpless 
are abandoned, then to moral cowardice is suicide not 
added the base crimes of desertion and J ustifiable - 
betrayal of trusts. The mere physical courage neces- 
sary to the act of self-murder is only that of an infuri- 
ated animal ; it is not the courage of a sound mind. 
Even the Stoics in defending suicide could justify it 
only as a last resort, — the despairing act of one to 
whom the ills of life seemed insupportable. 

3. It is idle to argue in support of suicide that, 
because life has been thrust on us without our choice, 
therefore we have the right to throw it away when- 
ever it seems undesirable to continue it. „ , , 

False de- 

The truth is, life itself is the master bless- fence of 
ing, the groundwork of all other blessings, smci e * 
and all that a man has, in a healthy state of mind, will 
he give to retain it. The highest joy, — the life of all 
life, — is in the conscious victory over, — the rising 



216 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

superior to, — all the ills and evils to which our mor- 
tal life is here subject. The highest virtue is reached 
only through survival of trial and by stepping-stones 
of affliction. 

§ 119. II. Every man owes it to himself not to 

cower before obstacles ; and not to be wanting in 

courage and calmness in sudden danger. 

Duties of to . & 

perseverance The removal or surmounting of obstacles 

and courage. ^ g Qne necessai y me thod of developing 

native powers, and accumulating personal energy. 
He whose path has always been open and level lacks 
one element of character attainable only through 
struggle and effort. To cower before an obstacle and 
retreat, is to yield to a weakness fatal to future suc- 
cess. To conquer a difficulty is to start an energy 
that cumulates with every new victory. To lose 
one's presence of mind and one's courage in the face 
of sudden danger, is accounted a reproach to any 
rational being. The only security against it is fore- 
thought, the habit of reflection on the uncertainty of 
all that now is, and a kind of mental rehearsal of 
what might justly be expected of us in any sudden 
and unexpected emergency. 

§ 120. III. The duty of fidelity in trusts. This is 
one of the most binding of human obligations. 
Fidelity in Treachery is instinctively execrated even 
trusts. among savages. To an enlightened mind 

every form of it is criminal. And faithfulness in 
trusts is quite as much a duty to self in whom the 
trust is reposed, as it is to him who reposes it. In 
the betrayal of trust, the betrayed is in reality not so 



DUTIES IN SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES. 217 

much injured as the betrayer. If the trust is pecuni- 
ary, the loss from treachery may not ruin the betrayed, 
but cannot fail to ruin the betrayer. Even if imme- 
diate detection does not ruin reputation, the sense 
of treachery burns up self-respect and peace of mind, 
and makes life a burden. No man is ever so pro- 
foundly deceived as he who expects satisfaction from 
stolen wealth. Embezzlement is a most despicable 
kind of theft, because it is an abuse of confidence. 
Duty to self demands that no form of temptation 
should ever induce us to part with our right to be 
trusted. 

The multiplied examples of betrayed trusts in our 
day and land, and the apparently growing insensibil- 
ity of the public mind to the enormity of these crimes, 
form one of the alarming symptoms of a „ 

° J r Commonness 

wide-spread moral disease. Against the of betrayal 
contagion of this disease no young man is 
now safe who is not fortified with an immovable 
resolution that nothing shall induce him to part with 
his integrity. 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 

These may be comprised under four general classes : 

I. Duties to fellow-beings simply as fellow-beings. 

II. Duties in the family. III. Duties in the mutual 
dependencies of society. IV. Duties to the state. 

CHAPTEK I. 

DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS SIMPLY AS FELLOW-BEINGS. 

§ 121. I. Duty to respect their rights. The rights 
of men are reciprocal and relative. We have already 
shown it to be the duty of every one to care for his 
individual own rights. He must protect them if he 
rights to be would fulfil his obligations. Equally true 
is it, that he who is bound to defend his 
own rights is equally bound to respect and, if need be, 
to defend the rights of others. The basis of justice 
as between man and man is the community of their 
rights. To the duty of every one to care for his own 
rights we have already given special attention. Less 
reference to one's own rights will accordingly be here 
needed than would otherwise have been the case. 
Among the rights of others which we are bound to 
respect are, 
218 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 219 

1. Right to life. If we claim a right to defend 
our own lives against others, others have equal right 
to defend theirs against us. Assailing their „. ... ... 

° & Right to life 

lives we forfeit all right to a defence of our to be re- 
own. One man's right to life is just as 
sacred as another's. Universal regard for this right, 
and for its sacredness, is one of the first essentials 
to the existence, and still more to the stability, of 
society. 

The practice of settling private differences by duel 
had its origin in a low estimate of the sacredness of 
the right to life, and in a direct violation 
of the duty to respect and defend it. The 
fancied healing of a wound of honor by a sacrifice 
of life is one of those delusions which having once 
seated itself in the popular mind, it is extremely 
difficult to dislodge. Men have been slow to see 
that a challenge to mortal combat for repair of an 
injury to honor is a proposal to avenge an imaginary 
wrong by the commission of an actual crime ; have 
been slow to see that in giving or taking a challenge 
to mortal combat there is virtually a commission of 
the double crime of suicide and murder, — of suicide 
because each one voluntarily puts his life in the 
hands of a deadly antagonist, and each one with 
deadly intent puts the life of his antagonist in jeop- 
ardy. Christian nations have done well to make 
duelling a penal offence, but nothing short of a clear- 
sighted public conscience speaking firmly against it 
as a crime, because a violation of the sacred right 
to life, can save moral cowards from committing it. 



220 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

2. Eight to personal liberty. This is the birth- 
right of every personal being, inalienable except 
Bight to per- through infringement on the rights of 
sonai liberty, others. Only crime, or attempts to commit 
crime, can justify any one in interfering with another's 
liberty. 

3. Eight to property. Nature provides by in- 
stinct for the defence of this right, as it does for the 
right to life. In truth property is in one sense a part 
Right to of life, since it is only by property, one's 
property. Qwn or ano ti ier ' s> that life is continued. 
In organized and civilized communities the whole 
force of the civil power is pledged to protect it. But 
only individual conviction of the inalienable right of 
every other individual to his own honestly acquired 
possessions can give to property, even in the best 
governed communities, its security. 

4. Eight to reputation. This is a species of 
property, requiring careful attention to acquire, and 
Eight to °f g rea t value when acquired. We have 
reputation, already recognized the duty of every man 
to protect his own reputation. In the present 
impotency of civil law to protect it, the moral 
obligation of every one to respect the right of his 
fellows to their reputations is intensified as never 
before. The heightened value of an untarnished 
name in this day of impeached and impeachable 
reputations adds its own special weight to the 
obligation. Legitimate criticism is, of course, always 
in order; but never detraction or slander, which 
are petty thefts and robberies. The duty of right- 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 221 

minded men is to frown upon detractors and 
slanderers as they would on any other unpunished 
criminals. 

§ 122. II. Duty to be honest and truthful. Human 
beings necessarily come into active relations with one 
another, even when not existing in organ- Dutiesof 
ized communities and under established honesty and 
governments. In the continuance of any 
kind of relations with one another the demand for 
honesty and truthfulness becomes at once apparent. 
Dishonesty and lying repel more effectively than any 
other forces can attract. 

1. Honesty, or the rendering to every one what is 
due to him, is, in the essence of it, merely a practi- 
cal recognition of the rights of property. Honesty a 
Whatever any one owes to another that P ractical 

" . recognition 

other owns and has a right to claim, of the rights 
Refusal of payment is dishonesty, — is one ° proper y- 
species of robbery. The kinds of dishonesty are innu- 
merable ; few only need be noticed here. 

1. It is dishonest not to pay a known but un- 
claimed debt. To withhold from another his dues 
because he chances not to know or to have Dishonesty 
forgotten them, is doubly dishonest, — is ^ciaimed"^ 
the dishonesty of concealment added to del3ts - 

the dishonesty of non-payment. Numberless unpaid 
debts of gratitude accumulate in every man's life; 
not to pay them is dishonesty. 

2. The deceptions practiced in the mechanic arts 
and in trade are among the commonest kinds of 
dishonesty. Enlightened moral sentiment condemns 



222 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

them; the thoughtless wink at them as matters of 
Dishonesty course. They differ from thievery and rob- 

SanfcTrTs bei T in form but not m S P irit - A Strictly 

and trade. honest man will be as unwilling to steal in 
one form as in another. 

3. The purposed violation of contracts may be a 
more open species of robbery than cheating in trade, 
Dishonest an( ^ can accor dingly be more effectually 
violation of dealt with by civil law, but is no more 
criminal morally than less daring modes of 
dishonesty. 

4 Very despicable forms of dishonesty are bor- 
rowing with no expectation of repaying ; repudiating 
Dishonesty loans whose only security was the honor of 
in ^ orr ° wing the borrower; and appropriating to one's 

3.11(1 6111 D6Z- 

ziing. own use funds entrusted for safe keeping. 

The moral guilt attaching to such forms of dishonesty 

is not a whit less than that of the crimes which send 

men to the state-prisons. 

2. The duty of truthfulness. This is only the 

duty of honesty in one special aspect of it. Lying 

differs from dishonesty in being a specific 
Truthfulness. , , „ J „ . T ° r . 

and restricted form of it. Honesty has 
reference more particularly to the actual transactions 
of men ; truthfulness or veracity, to the representations 
entering into and forming part of the transactions. 
Dishonesty is, as we have said, a species of robbery ; 
lying is a misrepresentation of reality, and is often 
one of the necessary steps towards the robbery. 

1. Methods of lying are as numerous as are the 
various modes of communicating thought. We may 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 223 

lie by look, word, and deed, and even by silence. De- 
ception through silence, or through mental reservation, 
is just as distinctively lying, as is any for- Methods of 
mally false statement in words. Prevari- lying ' 
cation and equivocation, with the intention of mislead- 
ing, are only special modes of lying. 

2. The criminality of lying is specially manifest 
in its disastrous consequences. It kills self-respect, 
begets distrust of others, destroys mutual criminality 
confidence, breeding perpetual dissensions oflying * 
and conflicts, and, where it prevails, making perma- 
nency of society and government impossible except on 
conditions of organized despotism and systemized 
espionage. 

3. With common lying, which does not culminate 
in overt actions of dishonesty, civil law cannot cope. 
It can deal directly with perjury, because 

this is a formal attempt to thwart civil 
law in its processes, and adds to the crime of lying the 
guilt of blasphemy. But with the exception of overt 
acts of dishonesty and perjury, the guilt of lying 
is left for the office of the individual conscience. 
All the more need, therefore, exists that every man 
settle it clearly in his own mind that lying, in every 
form of it, is a low, mean species of crime which not 
only degrades in his own eyes him who commits it, 
but makes him an object of contempt among honor- 
able men everywhere. 1 

1 To the much-mooted question in casuistry whether deception is ever allow- 
able, no unqualified answer, it seems to me, can justly be made. Special 
circumstances require special answers. Abundance of specific cases can be 
given, however, in which the answer should unquestionably be prompt and 



224 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

§ 123. III. Duty to cherish the spirit of true benevo- 
lence and to cultivate all those kindly acts, thoughts, 
and feelings which true benevolence begets. Benevo- 
lence is both a state of mind and a state of heart, — 
Truebenevo- is a settled mental conviction, and, as a 
lence defined, product of the conviction, an abiding moral 
disposition. It is both intellectual and emotional. 
True benevolence is an intelligent, well-directed, and 
permanent good- will towards all men. It does not 
expend itself in idle well-wishing, but by rational 
methods seeks to confer benefits. And it does not 
content itself with caring only, or even chiefly, for 
those to whom natural ties most incline, — is not dis- 
posed to break its best loaves to kith, kin, and country- 
men, and dispense only its refuse fragments to the 
outside world. Unselfish benevolence bids us care 
most for those least cared for by others, and to help 
first those most ready to perish. Considerations of 
relative worth may perhaps justify a choice between 
the objects of our benevolence, but selfish considera- 
tions can have no rightful place in determining the 
choice. 

without qualification in the negative. And yet others again can be given, 
such as dealing with an enraged lunatic, or seeking to evade a murderous 
pursuer, in which some degree of deception, if ever, would seem to be per- 
missible. Said one of the older citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, to the 
writer a few years ago, " I never in all my life was in so tight a place as 
when one of Quantrell's band in the great raid of 18C3, with the muzzle of a 
cocked pistol close to my head, demanded to know if I was an abolitionist. 
The raiders were shooting down my neighbors all about me ; but the thought 
flashed through my mind, if I say No ! I shall ever afterwards be ashamed to 
look any one in the face ; so I answered, Yes. An officer in command, stand- 
ing near, for some reason, I never knew what, shouted, 'Don't shoot him.' 
The pistol was removed. I assure you I took a long breath of relief, and 
have ever since been thankful that I was enabled to tell the truth." 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINb 225 

1. The duty of true benevolence may be seen 
from several points of view. 1. From its relation 
to the welfare of the race. Mankind, though com- 
posed of many units, is one. For the perfection of 
its oneness every unit is under obligation 

to seek the good of every other unit. The a duty be- 
more completely this obligation is fulfilled J^^ 0- 
in a community or nation, the closer will public 
be the approach of a community or nation g0 ° ' 
to completeness of estate. Should the spirit of benev- 
olence ever so prevail as to animate every human 
heart, the perfection of the race would have come, or 
would inevitably and speedily ensue. 

2. The connection of benevolence with the fulfil- 
ment of every other duty between man and man, 
makes it one of our first duties to cherish the spirit of 
benevolence. Men may respect the rights of one 
another through fear of consequences from infringing 
on them ; and they can be honest and truthful in their 
dealings with one another, solely from motives of 
policy. But the finer qualities of heart needed in the 
ever-changing intercourse of man with man Genuine 

. i ., , benevolence 

must have a purer source than can be thefuim- 
found in any social or civil sanctions of mentof 

. . every other 

conduct. Only the spirit of genuine benev- duty, 
olence can generate them. And so close is the 
connection of the spirit of benevolence with every 
other human duty, that in a full measure of it as 
a ruling power of the soul — when it becomes a 
clear-seeing rational love — itself becomes the fulfil- 
ment of every other duty to man. In the words of 



226 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

the Apostle Paul, " all the law (i. e. every duty) is 
fulfilled in one word, even in this : Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself." 

3. The spirit of disinterested benevolence breeds a 
serene and peaceful joy in the breast where it dwells. 

In this "joy lies the true blessedness of 

Disinter- ... 

ested benev- living. It is not our duty to strive to be 
man^s hign^ 3 possessors of this joy; in so doing it will 
est blessed- evade us. Merging all private ends in an 
unfeigned and unselfish regard for others 
the joy slips silently into our hearts and begins its 
melody there before we are aware of its presence. 
True benevolence blesses him who is the subject of 
it only as it has first blessed him who is the object 
of it. 

4. Enlightened benevolence is needed to regulate 
spontaneous feelings and impulses. In common with 
Enlightened all other animals man is subject to sym- 
benevoience p a fc]-Q es an( j aversions. Unregulated, these 

needed to r ° ' 

regulate our may become sources of mistakes and mis- 
andaver- eS chief. Out of unguarded sympathies spring 
sions. broods of dangerous impulses. Aversion 

waxing into antipathy may terminate in crime. Only 
a wise benevolence can control and guide aright the 
sympathies and antipathies of man in his intercourse 
with man. 

II. It is our duty to cultivate all the kindly acts 
and thoughts and feelings prompted by the spirit 
of benevolence. 

1. True benevolence incites to the relief of wants 
and of every form of distress. Private charities are 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 227 

only the spirit of benevolence embodied in concrete 
forms. But enlightened benevolence dictates discre- 
tion in the bestowment of charities. He is 

Duty of pri- 

not truly benevolent who so relieves want vate chari- 
as to perpetuate it, or is moved to allevi- ties ' 
ate distress solely to relieve his own emotions of 
sympathy. Nor should any one feel at liberty in 
this day of organized public charities to abandon his 
personal and private acts of kindness to the needy, 
because of a public provision for them. The neediest 
poor are those who shrink from the official almoner 
of public charities ; only watchful eyes discern them. 
In relieving these there is a blessedness to both giver 
and receiver of which no wise man will allow himself 
to be deprived. 

2. True benevolence incites to, and duty requires 
us to cultivate the habit of, charitable judgments, 
courtesy of speech, abstinence from inju- Duty of 
rious gossip and talebearing, and a diligent th o Ug ht3 and 
attention to all those civilities, courtesies, speech, 
and amenities which add to the pleasantness of life. 

3. It is our duty to cultivate the habit of gentle- 
ness under provocations and of forgiveness of injuries. 
The frictions of life are perpetually provoca- Duty of 
tive of ruffled spirits and resentments, tienessand 
These, if unsubdued and left to their nat- 
ural action, multiply and aggravate the frictions, and 
so by reaction intensify themselves. The only effect- 
ual buffer to intentional provocations is habitual gen- 
tleness : " a soft answer turneth away wrath." The 
surest cure of an injurious spirit is the spirit of for- 
giveness on the part of the injured. 



228 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

§ 124. IV. Duties to lower animals. The lower 
animals, like ourselves, have nervous systems, and 
Duties to are susce Ptible of both physical satisfaction 
lower ani- and physical suffering; but man's right to 
subject them to his needs is regarded as 
unquestionable. His right also to destroy such ani- 
mals as would destroy him or his domestic animals, 
or as actually interfere with his use of the earth, can- 
not justly be questioned. And his right to slaughter 
such animals, wild and domestic, as may be needed 
for food hardly needs defence. But to hunt and 
kill for the mere pleasure of the chase is, to say the 
least, an amusement that gratifies the coarser and 
never the finer instincts of our nature. Needless 
torture is an unmistakable sign of brutal disposition. 
Civil laws rightly make it a punishable offence. 

The ground of man's obligation to be considerate 
and merciful in his treatment of dumb beasts is three- 
Ground of £o]&- 1. As living creatures they have a 
their right right to the continuance and enjoyment of 
life, so long as they interfere with no higher 
rights than their own. If they do thus interfere, then 
by a universal law of nature they must yield and 
disappear. That law is that the weaker and less 
worthy shall be borne down and swept away by the 
stronger and worthier. But the right of both the 
useful and the harmless animal to live and enjoy life, 
man as rational and moral is in duty bound to respect. 
To the useful animal that serves him he is doubly 
bound to be considerate and merciful. 

2. As sentient and capable of pleasure and pain, 



DUTIES TO FELLOW-BEINGS. 229 

dumb beasts are entitled to considerate treatment from 
man. With disputes over the question whether ani- 
mal intelligence differs from human only in degree, or 
in both degree and kind, we need not here As sentient, 
meddle. Sufficient for us to know that are entitled 

to consider- 

animals are capable of suffering. Our duty ate treat- 
is not to cause or permit them to suffer ment " 
needlessly. That they distinguish between kindly 
and cruel treatment is incontestable. 

3. To treat dumb beasts unkindly is to brutalize 
the human feelings. Even the lowest brutes are 
moved to sympathy by signs of suffering Iu treatment 
in their kind. For man, who can see of them bm- 

P Pl , . t • i i , -I • talizes man. 

signs of suffering which no brute can dis- 
cern, to be indifferent to suffering, is to be less humane 
than the brute. A human brute forfeits his right to 
sympathy and even to kindness. 

4. The right of man to subject brutes to suffering 
by vivisection for the advancement of medical science 
has been warmly disputed. But if the right Rignt of 

of the butcher to destroy animal life for vivisection, 
the continuance of human life be conceded, it is diffi- 
cult to show why the right of the physiologist to 
destroy animal life for the same object is not equally 
good. If a horseman has a right to press his horse to 
extreme suffering in flying from a pursuing foe, why 
not subject some lower and useless brute in seeking 
to save a multitude from the power of some hidden 
disease ? Modern science has reduced the amount of 
suffering at the butcher's hands to a minimum, and 
it has done the same for suffering iu vivisection. The 



230 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

vast increase of skill in the diagnosis of hidden dis- 
eases in our day, all of which is due to knowledge 
obtained by vivisection, more than justifies a hundred- 
fold over all the animal suffering ever inflicted by 
vivisection. Intelligent interposition for the protec- 
tion of animals against needless suffering commends 
itself to all reflecting minds as reasonable and just. 
But a weak sentimentalism, interfering unintelligently 
with the use of animals in vivisection, and in other 
ways by which medical science is advanced, would, 
if prevailing, deprive us of one of the most fruitful 
sources of information now open to man in battling 
with some of the most mysterious and destructive 
of human diseases. 



CHAPTEE II. 

DUTIES BN THE FAMILY. 

§ 125. Family, in its broadest sense, denotes a num- 
ber of people dwelling under the same roof and sitting 
at the same board. The term is here used in the 
narrower sense of parents and children, inclusive of 
the accident of servants ; and it is of the The family, 
reciprocal duties of those thus composing cai dutieTof 
the family that special notice will here be its members, 
taken. If the family, however composed, is to be 
held together, there must be individual obligations, 
and these must be fulfilled. If it is to have stability, 
and is to realize its manifest design, there must be in 
its beginning and in its continuance a faithful com- 
pliance with these obligations by every member of it. 
As the most sacred as well as the most beneficent of 
all human institutions, it requires more than any 
other a most scrupulous regard for the conditions on 
which alone its beneficence depends. 

The legitimate origin of the family is, of course, in 
a legal and formal marriage. In this rela- origin of 
tion originate, and around it cluster, all the the family, 
duties of the family. 

§ 126. I. The marriage relation. This is a relation 

231 



232 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

which nature invites and which religion sanctions. It 
is undoubtedly an ordinance of God. But it should 
Marriage, ^e ente red into only after the most careful 
andrequi- deliberation that can possibly be given to 
it. Hastily and unwisely contracted, a life- 
long wretchedness may spring out of it. Intelligently 
and conscientiously entered into, the highest human 
happiness may be found in it. But in order to the 
happiness of those entering it, there must be compati- 
bility of temper, congeniality of tastes, and a mutual 
and absolute confidence in each other. Matrimony 
without mutual affection and confidence is a crime 
against nature. Contracted from any other motive 
than that of mutual regard, it will avenge the wrong 
with a wretchedness all its own. To contract it with 
any other thought than that of its continuance while 
life lasts, is the basest of treachery ; is a special act 
of perfidy to the innocent and helpless ones whom, in 
course of nature, the relation may bring into being. 
But the discovery by those who are about to 
Breaking of marry of an undoubted absence of the 
menteto conditions of a happy marriage, is unques- 
marry. tionably a sufficient reason for a suspension 

and even a final abandonment of their purpose. No 
amount of solemnity or duration of an engagement to 
marry can justify a fulfilment of an engagement in 
face of the clearest evidence of future discontent 
and unhappiness. As between the alternatives of a 
union of disunited souls and the violation of betroth- 
ment, there can be but one reasonable answer. Better 
the breach of an unwise, possibly a foolishly hasty, 



DUTIES IN THE FAMILY. 233 

promise, with a short, sharp pang of disappointment 
on the part of one, than the lifelong domestic misery 
of two. 1 But when marriage has once been con- 
tracted, an irrevocable vow has been taken. Inexor- 
able duty then requires that the married pair shall 
set themselves assiduously to the task of inspiring 
each other with confidence and affection. In order 
to a continuance of the marriage relation, and of the 
happiness that should be found in it, there must be 
a continuance and growth of the esteem and affection 
in which it originated, and withal there must be a 
cultivation of the gentleness and considerateness of 
manners which mutual affection engenders. No hon- 
orable and upright person will seek relief from reme- 
diable domestic evils in divorce. 

§ 127. II. Divorce. For good and sufficient cause di- 
vorce is undoubtedly justifiable. That cause, and the 
sole one, according to the Author of our holy religion, 
is adultery ; and with the sufficiency of this cause 

1 Early and long engagements sometimes involve in most serious perplex- 
ities. Two persons of equal intelligence and of the same level in society join 
with sincere affection in an engagement to marry at some future day. One 
enters on a course of liberal education ; the other remains at the same stage 
where both were at the start. Years pass on, and the time draws near for a 
fulfilment of their marriage engagement. Both have been gradually awaking 
to the consciousness that they no longer stand on the same level, — that with 
the sincerest of purposes to be loyal to each other, the bond of sympathy that 
once held them has vanished. Shall the engagement be kept? The one 
whose mind has been enlarged and whose tastes have been cultivated hesi- 
tates; the other insists it shall be kept. If broken, a great wrong is apparently 
inflicted, and very likely a real and grievous wrong. If the wrong be to the 
woman, as most commonly happens, it is all the more grievous, — perhaps an 
irreparable calamity. The only preventive of such disappointments is that 
persons thus engaging themselves shall be careful to continue along lines of 
education nearly enough parallel to secure to them a common standing-ground 
of intelligence and taste, and thus a continuance of mutual appreciation and 
regard. 



234 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY 

jurisprudence and moral philosophy have uniformly 
agreed. To this cause some legislators and judicial 
sufficient authorities have added others, — such as 
cientgrounds desertion, habitual drunkenness, and crimi- 
f or divorce. na i abuse, — as good and sufficient reasons, 
resting the sufficiency of the reason on the ground 
that persons guilty of these crimes either have already 
committed adultery, or are in a state of mind equiva- 
lent to the commission of it. That there may be in 
either one of these a sufficient reason for separation 
need not be denied. But separation is not divorce. 
Husband and wife have an undoubted right to live 
apart, if they cannot live together peaceably ; but they 
have no moral right to marry again. The demonstra- 
ble and unpardonable iniquity of groundless divorces 
is in the remarrying of the divorced. 

No signs of degeneracy in our American social life 
are more conspicuous, or more decisive, than in the 
laxity of laws in many of our states in relation to 
marriage, and the recent rapid multiplication of actual 
divorces under these laws. Divorces not a few, there 
is reason to believe, are now obtained on plausible 
grounds, but for reasons which no honorable man or 
woman would dare, even before a not over-scrupulous 
public, to avow. The moral wrong inflicted on inno- 
cent children by these divorces is cruel and wicked 
in the extreme, and the moral influence of them on 
the young and on whole communities is beyond 
estimate mischievous. The indignation against the 
polygamy of Mormonism has been strong and deep and 
wide ; but a stronger, deeper, and wider indignation 



DUTIES IN THE FAMILY. 235 

should be against those who, for trumped-up reasons, 
have through divorce rid themselves of wives or 
husbands only that they might in a freak of fancied 
preference marry some one else. The best protection 
against the perils of easy divorce is, greater caution 
and deliberation in marrying, and an unalterable 
determination that the obligations of the marriage, 
come better or come worse, shall continue so long 
as life shall last. 

§ 128. III. Parents and children. Parents, by virtue 
of becoming parents, rest under the most stringent 
obligations to care for their offspring. To cause life 
is to assume a most solemn obligation to protect it, 
and to provide for its needs. Children, Dutiegof 
as the most helpless young that begin life parents to 
in this world, must be cared for or perish. 
In providing this care parental instinct and parental 
duty coincide. Parental duty also requires that due 
attention shall be given to the training and education 
of children, — that they shall at least be prepared, so 
far as parental influence and authority can succeed in 
preparing them, for the responsibilities known to be 
awaiting them on coming to their majority. If a 
bread-winning occupation will be needed by them, 
due preparation should be made for it. If wealth is 
to be transmitted to them, it is criminal neglect not to 
train them to an intelligent and rational use of it. 
To bring up a boy in luxurious ease and self-indul- 
gence, and then, by a trusteed estate providing for all 
his wants, to rob him of all inducement to exertion, 
is a species of stupid cruelty of which no sensible 



236 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

parent should ever be guilty. Better a thousandfold 
to be left in penury, if trained to industry, than 
trained in idleness to be left with a fortune. The 
greater the fortune, the greater the calamity. If 
children are to be left with fortunes, too much care 
cannot be taken to train them to a rational use of 
them, as well as to habits of due self-restraint. 

But if parents by virtue of parenthood are bound to 
care for their children, equally true is it that children 
by virtue of being born are morally bound to respect 
Duties of an( ^ reverence an d obey their parents. And 
children to here it is true of the filial instinct as of the 

parents. . 

parental, that it corresponds with duty. 
The child naturally loves and obeys its first protector. 
What instinct does for the infant and child, developed 
and transformed into a living principle, it should do 
for the youth and adult. No stronger duty exists for 
youth than to love profoundly those who of all beings 
on earth love them best, and in loving to obey them 
as those who of all others are most disinterestedly 
careful for their good. The one commandment of 
the Mosaic ten accompanied with promise is : Honor 
thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long 
upon the land. And surely no principle is more 
effective in conserving the stability of a people than 
respect for parents and regard for their wishes. In 
the beginning of American society there was doubt- 
less extreme exaction of filial reverence; the reac- 
tion from that extreme into the opposite extreme of 
disregard for parental authority bodes no good for 
American society or for the stability of American 
institutions. 



DUTIES IN THE FAMILY. 237 

§ 129. IV. Servants. These are not essential to the 
existence of the family as such, but are its accidents 
or adjuncts; often indeed indispensable to the com- 
fortable existence of families, and always Domestic 
useful. They stand in the double relation servants - 
of service to both parents and children. Like every 
other member of the household they have both duties 
and rights. Faithful performance of the first is 
rightly exacted; the second should always be cheer- 
fully conceded. Domestic slavery happily has ceased 
from among us, and no unprejudiced person now 
ventures to defend it, even on the low ground of 
economics, political or domestic. But there may be 
domestic oppression. As a safeguard against this, 
both parents and children should be considerate of 
the needs and rights of servants, as well as of their 
duties. And whatever the degree of their intelli- 
gence, they do not fail in the end to appreciate and 
make returns for considerateness of treatment. They 
who would be faithfully served must be faithfully 
attentive to their servants. Few things are more 
beautiful in the relations of families and their ser- 
vants, than the mutual mindfulness existing after long 
years of faithful service and kindly treatment. 



CHAPTER III. 

MUTUAL DUTIES IN THE DEPENDENCIES OF SOCIETY. 

§ 130. Human society consists of a great variety of 
classes of people held together by ties of interde- 
pendence. No one class can subsist in complete 
independence of all others, and no one class is so 
hopelessly dependent that others are not dependent 
Dependen- on & Society is thus a system of mutual 
ciesof dependencies. Out of these dependencies 

society and 

moral ques- a great variety of vital questions have 
arisen, — questions which are calling for 
answers more urgently to-day than ever before, and 
are likely to call more urgently in the years imme- 
diately before us than they have yet called. The 
questions are both economic and moral. But the 
moral in them alone has interest for us here, and 
should have predominant interest elsewhere. No 
economic answer that is not morally right and just 
can ever furnish for the questions a final solution. 
To only a few of the relations out of which the ques- 
tions spring can or need we here give attention. 

§ 131. 1. Employers and the employed. Between 
these there is always an agreement, tacit or formally 
expressed. Moral obligation requires that the em- 
238 



MUTUAL DUTIES OF SOCIETY. 239 

ployed shall render faithful service according to the 
agreement, and that the employer shall make a just 
compensation. Political economy says the Mutual 
compensation is, and ought to be, deter- pi^yers'and 1 " 
mined by the law of supply and demand, employees. 
Morality, which is only another name for justice, says 
the compensation should be a fair equivalent for the 
service rendered, and that it is an injustice in an 
employer to take advantage of an over supply in the 
market of the unemployed to extort from their neces- 
sities an inadequately paid service. The cruel wrongs 
sometimes practised on needy needlewomen in our 
large cities are instances of this kind of injustice. 
To find a test for what is just and right between 
employers and employees, regard must be had to 
the abstract question of the relation of capital and 
labor. 

§ 132. II. Capital and labor. In the present eco- 
nomics of the world little if any employment can be 
given without more or less capital in the possession, 
or at the command, of the employer. This capital is 
entitled to receive its earnings or interest; Justrela . 
and for the care of the capital, or of what- ^o^ of capi- 

. , . tal and labor. 

ever it is invested in, by its owner or his 
agent, there should also be a rightful compensation. 
But labor is also the employee's capital; and its 
owner is entitled to his full share of the profit accru- 
ing from the application of his labor to the capital 
of the employer. If the capitalist must have the 
earnings of his capital, and of his agent in managing 
the capital, so also must the laborer, or operative, 



240 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

have the earnings of his capital or labor. Strict 
justice requires that the laborer's pay shall be his 
exact share or proportion of what has been earned by 
the conjunction of his labor with that of others and of 
the capital used. To secure some such fair distribu- 
tion of earnings is the object of the co-operative 
system ; and to secure such distribution, or its equiv- 
alent, in a blind, headlong way, seems to be the object 
of " strikes." 

§ 133. III. Strikes. The right of employees to 
unite in self-protection against oppression, and if 
The moral need be to refuse unitedly to work for 
borers- & " gi yen compensations, cannot be justly as- 
strikes. sailed. But when employees so uniting 

interfere with the free action of others who decline 
to unite with them in their strikes, they trample on 
individual rights, and are guilty of a tyranny which 
admits of no justification ; they are guilty of inflicting 
on others the very wrongs against which they claim 
to be seeking by their unions to defend themselves. 
The despotism of unreasoning masses of men is in- 
comparably more merciless than that of individuals. 
Labor unions are sometimes most iniquitously un- 
just in dealing with employers. Taking occasion to 
strike at critical moments just when the damage to 
employers from forsaking their service will be most 
disastrous, they are guilty of organized extortion, and 
by their injustice alienate the sympathies of an im- 
partial public. If capitalists and employers are op- 
pressive and extortionate, employees will not remedy 
the evils under which they suffer by themselves be- 



MUTUAL DUTIES OF SOCIETY. 241 

coming still more tyrannical and oppressive and ex- 
tortionate. *■ 

§ 134. Professional duties. The members of the so- 
called learned professions are just as much employees 
as are those who for stipulated wages agree to render 
the service of so many hours per day of Dutyin 
manual labor. The difference consists in professional 
the kind of service and time devoted to it. 
The professional man, working with his mind rather 
than with his hand, performs his work in a longer or 
shorter time according to his ability, and the hardest 
of it by day or by night as best suits his convenience 
or his habits. Of all employees he accordingly most 
needs to be watchful over himself that he shall 
be scrupulously honest in his services. In most pro- 
fessions, the desire for success and personal advance- 
ment will stimulate to highest endeavors. And yet 
in all the professions instances are not wanting of 
failure from lack of industry and of faithful perform- 
ance of duty. From want of attention lawyers lose 
cases and soon lose employment ; doctors lose pa- 
tients, and with their patients their practice ; clergy- 
men lose parishioners and in due time their parishes ; 
teachers lose pupils, and editors lose readers, and as a 
consequence both lose their places. Intentional de- 
ception in professional service is none the less criminal 
because not always punishable. A lawyer who is 
false to his client, or a doctor who is false to his 

1 Boycotting is a sort of conspiracy to force individuals or companies into 
compliance with illegal demands. Persons joining in such a conspiracy 
deserve to be mercilessly dealt with by the civil law. It is a species of 
organized mob rule which no country should tolerate for a day. 



242 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

patient, is just as much a traitor as he who betrays a 
city or an army into the hands of an enemy. The 
number of persons involved in disaster by treachery 
does not determine the measure of its guilt. 

§ 135. IV. The enlightened and the unenlightened 
have mutual duties. No one can rightfully withhold 
useful knowledge from his fellow-beings. For knowl- 
edge of his inventions and discoveries every one has a 
right to demand remuneration. But he who has any 
knowledge which will unquestionably add to human 
welfare and happiness, is morally bound to communi- 
Mutuai ca te it to others. Useful knowledge may 

duties of the k e rightfully turned into gain, but not right- 

enlightened ° J ° & 

and the un- fully concealed. The duty of the better in- 
eniightened. f orme( ^ everywhere, is to do their utmost 
for the enlightenment of the less informed ; the duty 
of the less informed is to be always ready to learn 
whatever it is to their advantage to know. The 
enlightened portion of every community ought to do 
what they can to promote the intelligence of the 
whole. 

1. Public schools are a marked illustration of a 
recognition of this duty of the enlightened towards 
the unenlightened. Public schools originated with 
men who had so strong a sense of this duty that they 
gladly added to the burden of their taxes to fulfil it. 
Duty of Later generations have re-enforced the 
™ Jjjf inins sense of the moral obligation by bringing to 
schools. its aid the force of political convictions. 

States whose governments rest on popular suffrage are 
under stringent political as well as moral obligation to 



MUTUAL DUTIES OF SOCIETY. 243 

see to it that the voting shall at least be intelligent. 
And it plainly is the duty of states, not only to pro- 
vide instruction in schools for children who are to be- 
come their citizens, but to require under penalty that 
the children shall be instructed. States that have a 
right to live have a right to enforce compliance with 
the conditions of their existence ; no condition to the 
existence of a free state is more fundamental than 
that its citizens shall be both moral and intelligent. 1 

2. It is the duty of the more enlightened portion of 
every community to contribute by precept and example 
to the improvement of the less enlightened in manners 
and taste. These are closely akin to morals; good 
manners are in fact a species of good morals, manners 
and morals being not infrequently used as 
synonymous terms. In monarchical coun- Dut y°* 
tries, where grades of society are fixed, goodman- 
the lower orders, awed by rank and the good taste, 
superior intelligence of those above them, 
unconsciously imbibe something of their better man- 
ners and taste ; but in a democratic country, where 
the most ignorant and the most vulgar are made 
the political equals of the most cultured, it often 

1 Compulsory education for mental enlightenment, and compulsory educa- 
tion for the creation of religious convictions, are two very different things. 
Education for the latter purpose is foreign to the function of the state. 
Sectarian attacks on the public schools for not giving religious instruction 
are unreasonable and too often uncandid. What connection there is between 
religion and arithmetic, or geography or grammar, or between religion and 
learning to read and write and spell, it would puzzle even a Jesuit to point 
out. The state has a right to require that the teachers in the public schools 
shall themselves be moral, and shall both by example and by precept teach 
good morals; but to say that morals cannot be taught except in conjunction 
with theological dogmas or with a church ritual, is to affirm what can never be 
proved. 



244 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

happens that men of the coarsest taste and rudest 
manners are, through universal suffrage, foisted into 
places of political prominence and of social influence. 
Their taste and manners infect the uncultivated classes 
as a kind of moral plague. Coarseness of manners 
and vulgarity of speech become the fashion. Arrogance 
of bearing, insolence of tone, obtrusiveness and general 
vulgarity of speech and taste, become the insignia of the 
independent citizen and voter. People with any degree 
of enlightenment or cultivation should be punctili- 
ously careful to present in their own better manners 
and better tastes examples that may be in some degree 
corrective of the vulgarizing tendencies of democracy. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

DUTIES TO THE STATE. 

§ 136. Our conception of duties to the state will 
depend largely on our conception of the origin and of 
the nature of the state, the conception of its nature 
always depending on the conception of its 
origin. If the state is only a skilful and byori^and 

convenient contrivance of men for living nature of the 

state, 
together peaceably and with common advan- 
tage to all, then duties to it will be simply matters of 
convenience or of policy. But if the state is the 
product of an inscrutable Power lying behind and con- 
trolling and organizing the wills of men into a unity 
of political life and ends, then duties to the state are 
stern and unalterable moral obligations. Of all the 
propounded theories of the origin of the state, there 
is but one that seems to furnish a just and stable ground 
of obligation to it. 

The notion that the state is only an expanded or 
developed family, does not furnish a sufficiently satis- 
factory account of its origin. A family has Theories of 
a voluntary beginning, and at will may be the origin 
broken up and ended; not so with a state. 
No human wills can directly originate a state ; they can- 



246 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

not destroy it. Nor does the theory that it originates 
in organized compulsion suffice as an explanation. A 
state must already exist before it can organize its own 
forces, or be acted on by organized forces from without. 
Nor does the gregariousness of man explain its origin. 
Hordes of men, however large, are not a state. Self- 
interest may hold vast numbers of men together for 
longer or for shorter periods, but they are not states. 
Nor does the theory of a social compact suffice, not- 
withstanding the elaborate defences of it by various 
authors, and by authors of various nationalities. No 
state can be historically proved to have had such an 
origin. And no one entering a state, either by birth 
or by emigration, ever makes any contract with it. 
Entering it, he must subject himself to its authority, 
whether he wills or not. 

The state is a collection of persons organized into 
a body politic with unified interests and regulated 
True theory privileges and duties. As related to other 
of the origin states it is as much an individual and a 

of the state. . . 

person as is any single person composing it ; 
and in dealing with its component individuals it is the 
consolidated personality of the whole body politic. 
It is a politically supreme personal will, representing a 
Will higher than its own and higher than the sum of 
single wills composing the state ; and acting now 
legislatively, now judicially, and now executively. If 
this is a right conception of the origin and nature of 
the state, then 

§ 137. I. It is the duty of the citizen to sustain the 
state by every honest and honorable means in his 



DUTIES TO THE STATE. 247 

power. The ways in which one's service may be ren- 
dered are indefinitely numerous ; two only, support of 
as illustrations, need here be mentioned. the state- 

1. It is the duty of every one to render to the state 
his just share of pecuniary support. As an 
organization the state must have a govern- of just share 
ment ; the government must be administered ° taxes - 
by officers ; the officers must be paid. As the embodi- 
ment of intelligence and will, the state has the right, 
and is under obligation, to defend itself, protecting 
its own life and that of its citizens ; for this defence 
and protection it must have means, and so must 
tax its citizens. To pay his taxes, i. e., to bear his 
just share of the burden of sustaining the state — 
his just share being determined by the relative amount 
of what the state protects for him — is a moral as 
well as a political obligation. In a republic where the 
citizens are the state, the moral obligation is intensi- 
fied. To seek to evade just taxation, and one's full 
share of it, is therefore to refuse to perform a manifest 
moral as well as political duty. 

2. It is one's duty, if need be, to lay down his life 
for the state. The state may be in perils from which 
only the sacrifice of lives can deliver it. *, + . „ „.. 

J By the sacri- 

It has an undoubted right in emergency flee of one's 
to call for the sacrifice ; to render it, is 
simply to discharge an obligation. If no one suffers 
from the sacrifice except the one who makes it, the 
state accepts it as no more than its due. Surviving 
dependents suffering thereby are justly made pen- 
sioners of the state. They are justly pensioned, be- 



248 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

cause no one owes the state any more than what is 
distinctively his own ; he cannot by his self-sacrifice 
righteously tax for the benefit of the state those who 
are rightfully dependent on him. He can be under 
no obligation to violate a primal obligation of caring 
for those dependent on him to fulfil another obligation 
of caring for the state. But if in obeying the call of 
the state he has given up his life, every other citizen 
is solemnly bound to care for those whom his death 
has deprived of his support. In like manner compen- 
sation is due for any personal incapacitation for self- 
support incurred in answering the state's behest for 
service in its defence. 

§ 138. II. Duty to obey all laws of the state not 
manifestly contrary to the laws of God. All right- 
fully constituted authority, of whatever kind, should 
Obedience to ^ e reverenced. Obedience to all just laws 
laws right- i s rightfully exacted under penalties. The 
acted under state, by virtue of being a state, has au- 
penaities. thority, and is under the strongest obliga- 
tion, to exercise its authority in the enactment and 
enforcement of laws. 

Some light may be gained on the question of duty 
to obey the laws of the state by noticing their origin 
Ground of an( ^ design, origin and design being in this 
obedience to case b u t two points of view for looking at 

laws found ... 

in their one and the same thing. Laws originating 

origin. i n a s k a k e originate in definite ends or de- 

signs. Thus : 

1. In its organic or constitutional laws a state 
simply declares the conditions essential to its exist- 



DUTIES TO THE STATE. 249 

ence. The laws are declaratory of what is, and from 
the nature of the state must be. They 0riginof 
constitute the state, and are fundamental constitu- 

. .. I/? tional laws. 

to all its enactments, — are the ground or 
appeal in justifying all its statutes. To strike at any 
one of them is to strike at the foundations of the 
state. To set them at defiance, is to initiate revolu- 
tion. In respect to them there seems for every citizen 
but one alternative, and that is to obey them honestly ; 
and if in obeying there is hardship, or strain upon 
conscience, there is boundless liberty in advocating 
amendment, and, failing in this, freedom to emigrate. 

2. In its statutory laws, which may be indefinitely 
numerous, and of various kinds, a state declares what 
must or ought to be done to protect itself origin and 
and its citizens, as well as to promote the ^5* of 
common welfare and to realize the ends for laws, 
which all are organically united. To what extent the 
state can be justified in legislating for these ends, is 
a disputed point. All would seem to turn on the 
necessity, or on the legitimacy, of the ends sought to 
be accomplished. 

That a state has the right to protect itself 
against the introduction of epidemic diseases by 
quarantine is universally conceded. That it has the 
right to protect itself from becoming the receptacle 
of the transported pauperism of other states or 
nationalities, is also conceded. And its right to 
prohibit the sale of quick and deadly poisons, ex- 
cept under the most stringent regulations, is also 
universally admitted. But the right to prohibit, 



250 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

except under like regulations, the sale of slow 
poisons which slay a thousandfold more victims 
than, under our criminal laws, could possibly be 
slain by the most unrestricted sale of quick poisons, 
and which pauperize and make felons of untold 
numbers who might otherwise be good citizens, 
is disputed and denounced as unwarrantable inter- 
ference with personal liberty. And yet no one has 
made it clear, or can make it clear, why personal 
liberty can any more rightly be limited by the state 
in protecting itself against one source of pauperism 
and felony than by protecting itself against another. 
The truth is, self-indulgence and the love of gain 
combined so biind men as to make them insensible 
to the obligation of the state to stanch one of 
the most fruitful and pernicious sources of evil now 
open among the so-called Christian (not Mahomme- 
dan) nations. 

Laws prohibiting the sale of spirituous liquors may 
be difficult, and, in the present state of public opinion 
in most of the States of our Union, may be impossible 
of execution, and may, therefore, till a better public 

. sentiment prevail, be unwisely enacted, 

laws should But laws once enacted should be enforced 

be ^forced fc u h ^ T e cfc j g and not 

at all hazards. 

enforce them, is to invite lawlessness, — is 
to bring the authority of the state into contempt. 
The laws may be such as a portion of the community 
are disinclined to obey; may prohibit a class of 
offences which they are determined to commit. But 
that is no reason for not enforcing the laws. On 



DUTIES TO THE STATE. 251 

the contrary, it is sufficient reason for bringing the 
whole power of the state to their enforcement. 

There may be statutes, there have been in the past 
and may be again, which some persons feel 
in conscience bound to disobey ; statutes tiouTdis 1 - 
which may be regarded as against the laws obedience of 
of God. In such cases there would seem 
to be but one alternative. No man should violate his 
conscience. He may violate the law, and make the 
reason for the violation as public as the offence, and 
then quietly and uncomplainingly submit to the 
penalty. Such offenders are not promoters of public 
disorder, and do not entice to the commission of 
crimes. 

§ 139. III. Duty of strict honesty in fulfilling obli- 
gations to the state. Two causes influence strongly to 
dishonesty in dealing with the state. The 
first is, that the state is too often regarded of dishonest 
as an abstraction, — as having in itself only dealings with 

, the state. 

an unsubstantial and ideal existence, — as 
being at the best only an intangible body whose 
claims on us it is perfectly legitimate to escape if we 
can. Its officers are regarded as mere functionaries 
whom we are justified in eluding or misleading when- 
ever it suits our convenience so to do. Another cause 
is that penalties for dishonest dealing with the state 
are not often inflicted because the offences are not 
easily detected. But if the state is, as we have said it 
is, a consolidated personality embodying in one com- 
prehensive intelligence and will the personal units 
composing it, then to evade its claims is as dishonest 



252 PRINCIPLES OF MORALITY. 

as to evade the claims of any single person to whom 
we are indebted, and to be guilty of a crime whether 
detected or not. 

To evade one's taxes by purposed concealments from 

the assessors ; to elude payment of tariff by smuggling, 

by undervaluation, or by false entries ; 

Instances of " on • 

false dealing to send through the post-office with m- 
with the sufficient postage, are forms of dishonesty 
just as culpable as if practised in private 
transactions with individuals. The public conscience, 
it must be admitted, is far too lenient in judging such 
offences when detected, and the individual conscience 
by far too slow in condemning him who is conscious 
of having committed the undetected offences. It 
nevertheless remains true that he who cheats the state 
is guilty of a criminal act, and that the conscience of 
him who in any way does it ought to condemn him as 
quickly and as emphatically as it would if he had 
cheated his neighbor. 



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